


In Case It Is The Last Time

by theshiningdistractions



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, Gun Violence, Implied Harry Styles/OFC(s), M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Eleanor Calder/Louis Tomlinson, Past Liam Payne/Sophia Smith, Recreational Drug Use, Suicide Attempt, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 22:25:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6212563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshiningdistractions/pseuds/theshiningdistractions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam is dead. Louis is not. </p>
<p>Louis can't deal with the survivors guilt when Liam is shot after a boy's night out. So when a mysterious being offers him a chance to go back and fix things, Louis, who doesn't believe in second chances, doesn't hesitate to take it. When he wakes the next morning it is three days before the shooting and he finds himself scrambling to find a way to save Liam. Again. And again. And again. No matter what Louis tries, he can't seem to find a way to stop the murder and ever time that gun goes off the timeline resets again. The more Louis fails, the more he falls apart and he doesn't know how many more times he can see his best friend die before he finally snaps. </p>
<p>In the midst of all this, Niall and Harry are having the fallout of the century, everyone is still dancing around the Zayn issue, and Niall is trying to convince Louis that his desperation to save Liam is really just thinly veiled attraction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Case It Is The Last Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfic for round four of the 1D BigBang. I had a lovely time collaborating with the talented spareourworld who created [this incredible playlist](http://8tracks.com/spareourworld/moments) which really sets the mood for the fic. I'm grateful for the work she put into this and I hope you enjoy the soundtrack as much as I did.
> 
> To go from something wonderful to something a little less so, I want to urge everyone to please pay attention to the warnings listed for this fic. This story contains major character death, murder, graphic descriptions of death and violence, mentions of suicide attempts and self harm, implied cheating, and several instances of drug use and binge drinking. If any of these themes upset you, this might be a story to pass on.

Louis can’t stop laughing. Liam’s trying to pout, bottom lip puffed out nearly as dramatically as Harry when no one gets his jokes, but the effect is ruined by the smile trying to tug at the edges of his lips. It only makes Louis laugh harder.

They stumble like a drunken spider, the flailing limbs of two boy banders and their sparse security team falling of the car and into the streets. The cold air helps to clear up some of haze of left by the last shot and the sudden uproar of shouting girls is enough to _almost_ sober them up. Louis still can’t stop laughing, but he manages to keep it under his breath, mostly, aiming his smile at the tops of his shoes instead of the cameras. Liam’s fallen into ‘Daddy Direction’ mode before him, saying hellos and waving to a few of the more hysterical ladies on the sidewalk. Louis can hear security urging him not to stop for pictures.

It’s been years since it started and still it catches Louis in the pit of his stomach sometimes with how surreal it all is.

The walk to the hotel is fairly short, considering. Louis ignores the paps’ jabs to think of a follow up to the joke he’d been telling Liam back at the club, something to turn that jutted bottom lip into a fit of giggles. Something about a dictionary, he thinks, distracted by someone screaming Liam’s name far sharper than the rest of the crowd. It’s after two in the morning and the feel of the air suggests it’s a breath away from rain; Louis can’t imagine why anyone is so excited at this hour. Even in his good mood, he can’t wait for the comfort of bed. He wonders if it’s a sign of getting old.

There’s a cracking bang, followed by a swell in the screaming. This time it sounds fearful, almost angry, instead of the hysteria he’s used to greeting them outside of venues. Louis tries to turn, but the guard walking with him is suddenly pushing him forward and shoving him roughly into spinning door of the hotel. It takes a moment to right himself in his state and he mostly just falls into the door jam, painfully colliding his shoulder with the wood. Employees and mingling guests stare at him, and he’s annoyed for a moment, thinking that they all ought to know better at a nice place like this than gaping with open mouths. He turns after a moment of hard glaring, finding the colorful glass paneling that makes up the lobby window and presses his face against it. He watches the crowd pulse nervously, but it takes a moment for him to find the center of the ruckus. He tries to pinpoint where Liam and the rest of the security team went. Distantly, he knows that the paps are trying to get pictures of him staring out of the lobby. It makes him feel sick and like a fly caught under a glass.

One of the guards rushes into the lobby, frantic and jaw hard set. “Are you okay?” He asks, half shouting against the noise outside. The guard glares at the gaping guests inside too, waving complicated hands signs toward a staff member.

Louis nods, jittery and barely able to look away from the window. “Where’s Liam? Shouldn’t we go up?”

“Stay put,” the guard demands, then frowns like he’s reconsidering the order.

“Liam-” Louis tries again, glancing away from a moment. He doesn’t have the will to move anyway. The gunshot, suddenly he realizes the bang was a _gunshot_ , is still ringing in his ears. He feels so sick, like he skipped straight to the hangover. He’s too drunk for this, wants to leave and sleep and not think about the noise ever again.

The guard is wearing a radio and it buzzes to life. Something about an ambulance, something about a fading pulse. Something about crowd control, about blood loss. The lobby has sprung to life with security and employees running this way and that. Louis has another realization; the guests weren’t staring at him, they’d been staring out to the pavement just as he is.

“Liam.” Louis croaks, but he doesn’t know where he’s going with the thought. It doesn’t matter. The look the guard gives him says enough to make any more words catch in his throat. Louis sinks further into the window for support, turning his wide eyes back to the crowd outside. The guard leaves without another word, but Louis wouldn’t have heard anyway.

He bangs his forehead against the glass and wants to go home.

-

The hospital smells like disinfectant. Cleanliness is a loud, ugly kind of smell that Louis has never liked. Too clinical, too fake. It makes his nose run. At least, that’s the excuse he’s telling himself now. He hasn’t found one for the tears yet.

Somehow, he’d always thought he’d be more of a terror in these kinds of situations. Demanding information, shouting down nurses and clinging to the station desk. He thought he’d let anger blanket every other bad thing in that way he’d always been so distinctly good at. Or maybe he’d keep his mind, keep calm and level. Act like the adult he was and put his lessons as a big brother to good use. He was the oldest, after all.

Instead, Louis is too shell shocked to do much more than slump in a waiting room chair and cry. And cry he does, thinking about the ride over, when he’d gotten only a glance at paramedics lifting Liam into the back of an ambulance, his back a bright red, and been corralled himself into the same car he’d gotten out of earlier that night. He’d seen Liam again, just briefly, when they’d all made it to the hospital, rushing in the emergency entrance with the guards in tow, having to see again with his own eyes. All he’d seen was Liam covered in blood from the front, too, and wasn’t moving. Louis had been led away after that.

Someone told him it would be a while before the others came by. Paps and fans have the hospital grounds swarmed. The chaos wasn’t controlled yet and it was apparently too dangerous to bring Harry and Niall in just yet. Bitterly, Louis can’t find it in him to care. Shove the fans away, drag the boys in; he needs them here before anything else happens tonight.

No one’s said anything to Louis yet, not about what matters. No one’s mentioned Liam since they arrived and they’d drug the gurney away, forcing Louis to a waiting room instead. A grim faced nurse said they would do all they could. It felt like that had been hours ago. The guards are crowded in the little private waiting room with him and they weren’t saying much either. One had started to, when the nurse had left, but Louis couldn’t do anything but stare at the stain of blood on his t-shirt and had went so pale that the lot of them fell silent. Every now and again, someone will push water into his hands, saying Louis needed to sober up. Louis has never felt so sober in his life and really wishes he could stay in the drunken haze instead.

He isn’t so out of it that he can’t put the pieces together. He doesn’t need it spelled out. Louis knows Liam was the one shot. He knows it doesn’t look good. He just doesn’t want to think about it.

He lets himself stay in that slight haze of non-thinking for as long as everyone lets him get away with it, staring blankly down into his little cup of water and trying vainly to keep his snuffing to a minimum. He’s vaguely aware of the security team confirming Liam’s parents catching a red eye. It’s less vague when he overhears that the boys have entered the building. He hears them before he sees them, something almost comforting in its familiarity, and drains the cup of water so he doesn’t have to look at the door when they fall through.

He doesn’t lift his chin until he hears the low whimper from Harry, the sound of a wounded animal backed into a corner. He glances up in enough time to see Harry stumble back into Niall, who’s doing his best to keep both up them upright. A nurse is talking to Harry, spilling out the details Louis hadn’t been able to process before or perhaps new information he should be forcing himself to listen to. Louis locks eyes with Niall instead of paying attention, watching the sick nervousness roll through the normally unflappable man’s gaze. Louis is hit with the realization Niall’s a few seconds away from a panic attack.

It’s apparently enough to kick Louis from his cloudy shell and back into gear. He scrubs at his cheeks hastily, shoving the empty cup at a guard as he stands and barks at him to refill it. Louis crosses the room with a sudden burst of life and authority, grabbing Niall by the elbow and interrupting whatever spiel the nurse is on.

“Sit, Niall,” Louis half commands, voice soft but edged. It’s not that hard to maneuver Niall into the seat Louis had vacated, though Harry hasn’t bothered to let go and has to be shoved over into the next chair to avoid smothering Niall further.  Once he’s away Harry gives them a sudden wide berth, seeming to remember the forced awkwardness that the two had between each other in the past weeks. Louis hovers between the pair, focused more on the unsteady intakes of breath Niall’s forcing out than the tear stained Harry.  “Breath, Niall. Come on, deep breathes. One, two.”

Louis is used to this. They’ve been dealing with Niall’s panics and phobias since the beginning; Louis has been there through most of them. With Niall, he knows what to do and how to help. It’s autopilot, and some twisted part of him is enjoying it. It’s a relief to focus on keeping Niall relatively calm rather than what’s happening down the hall in surgery.

Harry, the nurse, the security team; for the most part they all let him by with it. Harry eventually detaches from Niall long enough to question the staff and send updates to the Paynes, looking a little better himself with something to do. Another nurse has come by looking optimistic and it’s enough to have dried up the worse of Harry’s tears. He switches from one phone call to another after that, getting comfort from his mother and worrying to the friend of the week and checking in with Lou and Lottie.

Louis is a little grateful Harry remembered his sister in all this, but he doesn’t show it beyond lingering look. Niall recovers quickly enough, gulping down water like his life depends on it and trying to direct Harry’s attention away from a hushed chat with Nick to himself. Niall wants to know everything and it makes Louis want to recoil back to his hazy place.  He forces himself to stay put and present while they rehash what’s already been said, stuff about major arteries and internal bleeding and other heavy medical words that make Louis want to claw at his ears.  But after that, they move on with Harry needling Niall about his health and being a general fuss. So Louis lets his hands fall back to his lap and tries to relax as much as he can.

He does just a bit, before the nurse walks in again with a doctor in tow. The brief optimism is gone from her face, replaced with a somber, professional mask that matches that of the doctor. Niall gasps again, breathed hitched enough that Louis thinks they should worry again. Harry’s shaking as he rises, a plastic popstar smile in place. He asks about Liam, how long it will be until they can see him and will he be awake when his parents come. Harry’s ignoring the pitying look the nurse gives him, rambling on with question after question about Liam’s recovery without giving the staff a chance to speak. Louis would call it denial if Harry wasn’t being uncharacteristically quick with his words, arms reigned in tight to his sides. The questions were just a defense mechanism to spare them the inevitable for a few moments more.

Louis stands abruptly, making quickly for the only other door to the room. He doesn’t want to be there to hear it, to watch what’s left of his boys fall apart. He’s going to hold it off just a little longer, stop thinking just a little longer. He books it for the bathroom, feeling bile in his throat. He’s not quite quick enough, the door still flung open when the doctor gives a time of death and Harry starts to choke.

Louis pulls the door shut, locking it and moving the heaving trash bin against the jam. He backs up against the far wall, hands sliding against tile to find a latch for the window. He can’t find one and he digs his nails into the slit in the window sill, prying at it fruitlessly. He keeps his focus on needing some air, pulling frantically until his fingertips hurt. He pulls his hands back, seeing the torn nails. He’s bleeding. It reminds him of the blood on the guard’s shirt.

He’s seized with a frantic anger that burns through his veins until it hurts to keep still. He smacks his hands against the glass, harder and harder until his palms sting. He balls his fists and steps back, ready to throw his weight into breaking the window and his phone goes off. Louis changes focus to pulling his cell from his tight jeans, answering blindly.

“How is he?”

There’s no hello. There’s question about how Louis is. There’s no apology for not calling in months. There’s no explanation for leaving. There’s just that sleepy question like he has some right to know. Like he’s not supposed to be here. Louis sees red.

“The fuck Malik!” he roars, throat actually hurting with the power of it. “You’re calling now? You actually fucking care? You think you can just act concerned when it’s too late? You think you can care after he’s gone?”

Dimly, he hears a quiet gasp on the other end of the line. Louis should stop. Louis doesn’t stop. “You weren’t even here! You bastard, you’re not even here! Always just calling me when it’s already over. Always leaving me to deal with it! Fuck you! Fuck-” Louis doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore, more a raw nerve than a thinking being. He strangles on the curse, a sob working its way through his chest. He doesn’t want to cry where Zayn can hear it, doesn’t want to be weak with him in the way he’s been over the years. He hurls his phone against the wall, watching it smash and bounce off the floor.

Someone’s forced open the door and a guard bolts in, looking around for any sign of trouble. Harry and Niall spill in soon after. Harry looks from Louis to the broken phone and sighs, face red and wet. “I texted him earlier. I thought he should know.” Harry half cries, looking at Louis and stretching out his arms like he needs a hug.

“Fuck you,” Louis says, watching the pain twist through Harry’s face and the anger burn in Niall’s. He tries to feel that anger too, but he just feels empty. There’s no pleasure in hurting these two, hadn’t even been any in hurting Zayn. Louis sags back against the window, sliding to the floor. The sob that had been working its way through his body finally bursts out, sharp and painful. The boys seems to forgive his harm quickly, because they’re on him in an instant.

It’s a dirty, terrible place to morn. Harry’s elbows are digging into his sides. The hard floor can’t be good for Niall’s knees. But Louis just pulls them in tight, fisting shirts and hair until they’re as close as he can get them. Their pain feels more real than his own. It gives him something else to think about.

-

The funeral is horrible. It’s not that the service is bad, it’s lovely actually. Lovely in that way sad things sometimes are. The priest is well spoken and makes Liam a larger than life sort of figure. Liam would have loved all the kind words people had for him. He probably would have appreciated all the flowers, so many that they can’t put them all up in the room. He’d overheard Ruth talking about donating some earlier, and Louis thinks Liam would have loved that too.

He would have hated all the crying. Most of the church is wet eyed, everyone so distraught over a life taken too soon. The families’ are inconsolable. Louis’s own mother has been sobbing since they arrived, Lottie cuddled into side like she had when they were children. Anne had broken down when Sophia had walked in all brave faced and runny makeup, excusing herself and getting followed by her worried kids.  Karen has been strangely quiet; someone had mentioned she was needing a little extra help getting through it today and she’s mostly staring at the casket with a vacant expression.

Louis wishes vehemently for a moment he had whatever she did, and then feels horrible for it.

Still, it would be nice to be able to avoid the questions.

Louis doesn’t think there’s ever been anything as horrible, other than maybe the death itself, than telling a grieving mother about her son’s last moments. Louis hadn’t even been there, not really, but he’d been the last friend with Liam before it happened. His family was hanging on that, wanting to know every little detail like it could help. Jay had told him, gently, that was their way of trying to make sense of a senseless tragedy. He just had to see it from their view.

Louis can’t though. He can’t see beyond his own sorrow. He’d rather not know anything or have never known Liam in the first place than be feeling this. It’s crushing, the weight of all the grief and anger on his shoulders. Jay calls it survivor’s guilt. Louis thinks it is hell.

When they finally make it through the service, Louis fidgeting all the while under the weight of the other attendants’ stares, they all converge on the grave site. It’s worse out here, actually, watching a casket lower into the ground. The priest recites a prayer that can barely be heard over Liam’s sisters sobbing. Lottie clings to Louis so hard that he can’t focus on much more than the sharp pain from her nails. And then it’s all over.

They start back to the car, Louis ready to go to his mother’s home and curl up in his old bed and stay there indefinitely. Sophia catches him before he can slip away. She’s still the beauty she always was, as ethereal as Louis remembered. Soft spoken, earnest, she’d always been a favorite amongst the various girls they’d all brought along over the years, close enough to be more part of the crew family rather than just another girlfriend. It was only because they’d been friends that Louis resists the urge to run at the site of her tear stained face.

“Louis,” Sophia starts, hoarse from crying. She blots now at the tear tracks on her cheeks, her makeup smeared and ruined beyond what her handkerchief can fix. “You were…”

Louis holds in his sigh, nodding before she can finish the thought. He tenses, prepared for more awkward questions about those last moments, more awkward answers that he knows won’t really give any comfort. “Yeah,” he says after a moment of silence.

“I’m sorry,” Sophia bursts after a moment, choking on something that almost sounds like a laugh. “I know I don’t have the right to ask. We weren’t even…anymore. I probably shouldn’t even be here.”

“No,” Louis startles. “He would have wanted, he loves you Soph.”

“And I wasn’t there.” Her face crumbles, tears welling up again and whole body trembling. She lurches forward and Louis reaches out a split second before she crashes into him. It’s not the first time he’s had a girl crying into his chest, not even the first time in the past few days. But this cuts deep, everything in her sobs reflects the ache in his gut.

“I wasn’t either.” He whispers into her hair, dragging her closer. Some of the lingering attendants are watching them, he’s certain he catches sight of a cell phone from the corner of his eye. And further off, there’s Harry being held back from coming over by a stone faced Niall. Louis shuts his eyes and tries not to care about what rumors this will stir later.

-

Weeks pass, though Louis can’t be assed to keep track. He moves from his old bedroom at Jay’s back to his own house. His mother had only allowed him a few days of misery before she was chiding him for the drinking and moping, citing statistics on ‘suppressive substances’ and ‘depressive episodes’. The kids had seemed troubled by his moody behavior, his brother shying away from him anytime they were in the same room too long. The older girls were louder about it, not bothering to cover up they’d been complaining to Jay. Louis hates worrying the kids, he’s the oldest and it’s his duty to be looking after them.

He can’t snap out of the funk, so he moves out again and out of their sight.

His own home doesn’t make him feel much better; he hadn’t yet been able to clear out the reminders of El. Really he hadn’t truly tried, left it for when touring was over to get that fresh start. Instead it was now bringing in a fresh wave misery every time he found something she’d left. A book she’d given up half way through, the mug she always insisted on him using, her pillow. Sometimes it almost makes him forget what else he has to feel miserable about. The rest of the time he has alcohol.

He takes a leaf from Niall’s book, finding the smallest and tucked into corners little places where everyone pretends not to notice him and the paps never find. There’s enough sense left in Louis to know that the last thing anyone needs for his downward spiral to be splashed all over the Sun. The Paynes didn’t need to see it, Louis certainly didn’t want his sisters seeing it. Knowing and seeing were always different beasts.

He’s well aware that everyone’s whispering behind his back about his binging. He can tell with every text he gets asking him to come over, every call with those delicate questions how he’s faring. The group text is still open, the last text from Niall reaming out Harry for saying how worried he is about Louis in a place they can all see. His own friends, the ones Louis never shared with the other boys, came knocking the first few weeks before dropping down to a few by the vine texts in the middle of the night. Louis answers none. There no way to really explain how Louis feels, how much fault lays on his shoulders.

And since he didn’t, couldn’t, need anyone else for that, Louis goes to alcohol.

-

The place is dingy and dank, reeking of something worse than anything Louis can remember smelling in a place that offered food. They’re playing music his grandmother likes. He’s the youngest person here. The bar top is sticky when he leans on it and it takes ages before the bartender looks up from cleaning glasses to serve him. The whiskey is second rate, like drinking petrol after all the expensive top-shelf shit he usually likes. Still, it does the job.

One drink quickly turns to four. Louis’s throat burns until it doesn’t. The way it sits heavy on his stomach reminds him he hasn’t eaten since breakfast yesterday. He grimaces and asks for the bottle.

 “You seem rather distraught.” A voice calls out to him, pierces his thoughts. 

He, she, they? Their features swim in and out of focus, shifting over and over in the blink of an eye. It hurts to stare at them and Louis looks down at his empty glass instead.

The person laughs beside him and it’s horrid. The sound is as grating as metal scraping on metal, tinny but loud, high pitched but also deep and booming. It’s a confusing mix of noise that sounds just as much that it’s bouncing within his skull than coming from the other person. Louis thinks he’s really outdone himself drinking this time.

“Oh Louis.” Their tone is dripping with fake pity, raising Louis hackles.

“What the hell do you want?” He spits, summoning all the fire he can with his stomach rolling and his brain aching.

“To help.”

Louis snorts and jerks in his seat, glancing back at the shifting face for a few moments before it makes him motion sick. “And what can you do to help me?”

“Louis,” the voice calls, “What if you could go back in time and change things? Get everything you want?”

Louis’s first instinct is to tell the person to go straight to hell, he would have done just that had it been weeks before. Instead, he looks around, at the few milling patrons who don’t even glance up at the oddity beside him. Instead, he thinks. What if he could? What if he could get Liam back? That’s what he wants, he thinks, to get Liam back and make everything normal again.

“It’d be nice if I could.” Louis sighs, wishing the bartender would hurry back with the bottle. He needs something stronger to erase this memory from tomorrow morning.

“You can, if you’d like. All it takes is your word.”

“My word?” Louis laughs bitterly.

“Yes. Your word. Tell me that you want it and it will be.” The voice promises with a lilt that reminds him of his mother. It makes his skin crawl and something freeze in his blood.

The bartender comes by, handing over the half empty bottle and granting a small reprieve. Louis takes it greedily, pulling it tight to him with both hands. He gestures to the person-thing beside him, watching the bartender’s eyes shift and eyebrows raise.

“You get some real freaks in here, right?” Louis half jokes, heart thudding in his chest.  He jerks his thumb at the woman, man. “This guy.”

The bartender’s face changes from confused to the mild concern he’s seen on adults when they spoke to a slow thinking child. The same face he’d seen from teachers who’d said he’d never be anything. “Don’t know what you mean, kid.”

Louis watches as the bartender swipes at the sticky countertop, hand slipping right through were the person’s arm is resting.

“Again, Louis, all I need is your word.”

Louis drinks in long pulls from the bottle, trying to drown out his fear. It’s a hallucination, he thinks, caused by the alcohol. A dream, he hopes, one he won’t remember when he wakes. It can’t be real. And, like he used to tell his sisters when they claimed monsters under the bed, what’s not real can’t hurt.

“Louis,” the voice insists.

“Yeah. That’s what I want. I want the chance.” He says faintly, speaking into the bottle’s rim.

“For what, Louis?”

“To make him live. I want the chance to save Liam.”

The creature smiles.  Louis isn’t looking, but somehow he _knows_ that thing is smiling.

“Consider it done.”

-

The chime of text alert wakes him. Louis is without a hangover, which is a little unnerving considering how much he drunk the night before. He’s used to waking with a pounding headache and a bad mood, ready to take it out on whoever is willing to humor him. Which, nowadays, isn’t many. Harry and Zayn used to get the brunt of it, getting snapped at and slipping him tokes, respectively, until he mellowed out. But after a while both had taken to Niall’s way of dealing with Louis, which was to say not at all. When Louis is in the rare occurrence of being sober, relaxed and in a good mood at the same time, he can admit Niall is the smartest of the bunch. When he’s none of those things, he’s just annoyed that Niall had taught the rest to ignore him until Louis remembered he’s meant to be an adult.

The only one who is still willing to deal with a prickly Louis is Liam. The thought makes the night before come back in a rush that makes an ache start behind his eyes and then he remembers the past few weeks which makes his eyes sting for a different reason. He rubs at them harshly, breathing snotty and hard until he can force himself to sit up.

The room isn’t his own. It’s obviously a hotel, and Louis is a little confused why he checked in someplace instead of going home. He hated the thought of having to go out in public in the day light, where the paps could capture his red rimmed glare and air of desperation for the weekly tabloids. Day meant he’d be forced to deal with people who had more on their mind than serving him drinks or trying to sleep with him.  At home, he could hide away until the bars opened for the night and fall apart in privacy. He wonders if his drunken self was smart enough to book long enough that he could wait on checking out.

He throws off the heavy duvet and is only slightly startled that he’s in joggers and missing a shirt. He’s not sure how he managed to change the night before or where the clothes came from but it’s a smaller thing that trying to find his phone. Louis finds it hooked up near the dresser, which finally gives him pause. He never carries a charger with him when in London; it drove the other boys batty when he stole one of their own before a home show. He steps back from the bed, scrubbing at the sleep in his eyes and giving the room a more critical look around.

A suitcase and bag, identical to the ones he favors for touring, are sloppily stacked on the chair in the corner. A pair of trainers, the same as his favorites, are tossed haphazardly by the bed end. The jacket he snatched from Niall somewhere in South America is wadded by the bedside table. He sinks back into the bed, frowning at the familiar wallpaper. All the hotels more or less run together after a while, only distinguishable when something really special stands out. Nothing does in this one, only familiar in the vague way all their rooms had become familiar over the years. Louis thinks it’s an awful strange dream to be having, to be back in a hotel and all settled in like on tour.

His phone lights up across the room, vibrating hard enough that it starts toward the edge of the dresser and threatens to fall. He crosses to look at it with a sigh, pinching idly at his exposed sides to try to wake up. Niall’s name flashes across the top of the screen but it’s the name within the message preview that has his skin feel cold. He quickly flicks through his password and stares at the innocent enough text until his eyes start to hurt again.

-Brekkie in Liams room !!-

There’s a series of emojis following it; apparently Niall had used every food related one he could find. The message is quickly followed up by one asking him to hurry up. Then another telling him the food was already there and the boys were starting without him. It’s exactly the kind of near domestic thing Louis had come to expect from years of touring with the boys.

It makes his heart feel like breaking.

It’s a horrible kind of nightmare to be reminded of Liam. He’s spent the last few weeks trying so hard not to think about him, not after the hell that had been the funeral. He doesn’t need the few hours he gets of sleep to become hell for him too. This is why he prefers the blackout drunk approach. Then he never has to dream about anything at all.

Still there’s some part of him, the part he’s been dutifully ignoring, that wants to see how far the dream can go. He glances at the door as he tucks the phone in his pocket, feeling the pull in his chest. Louis can see how long the dream lasts, if he can really walk out to Liam’s room and see him without things turning all twisty and dark like his dreams usually do. Some part of him reckons it will be nice, certainly a nicer image of the lad than Louis has left of him.

He’s out in the hallway before he knows it, body moving either on autopilot or dream logic. He pauses awkwardly outside of his door; he has no idea which room Liam is supposed to be in. Just as he’s thinking that it’s a little unfair of his subconscious, Niall pokes his head out of a room down the hall with toast still tucked into the corner of his mouth. He takes it out and waves, sending a shower of crumbs to the carpet.

“Oi oi!” Niall mimics in his best Yorkshire accent, which, since it was Niall, was fairly spot on. “Thought I was going to have to come wake you myself.”

Louis doesn’t smile or greet him, but stalks down to the door with minimal grumbling anyway. He’s glad Niall doesn’t find his behavior amiss, a dream shouldn’t anyway, though he supposes the real Niall was just as used to ignoring Louis’s snotty moods. Niall very nicely doesn’t bother saying anything else as he lets Louis in, instead happy to finish off his toast and give the grumbler a wide berth.

“We were allowed to come naked?” Harry asks the second Louis is in view, sounding accusatory and already tugging at the dress shirt he had artfully left unbuttoned down past the moth.

Louis frowns as hard at Harry as he can, too put out by the prospect of seeing a dream version of Liam to snap back as he usually would. He’s not anywhere near naked anyway. His joggers might be hanging a little lower on his hips than strictly necessary but it’s hardly something the boys hadn’t seen before. Harry laughs from where he’s sprawled on the bed, clutching a cup of something chunky and sickly green. Even in his dreams, Harry has to be a weirdo with bad humor. It’s more comforting than Louis likes to admit. 

“Don’t take your trousers off Harry. Please.”

Louis stiffens, feeling the voice crawl over his skin like an electric shock. He turns slack jawed, drinking in the sight of Liam. It’s not that his mind’s conjured some great view of Liam, like he would have thought. Liam looks like he’s just rolled out of bed, baggy shirt rumpled and pajamas stained with something reddish that looks a bit like barbeque. His hair’s flat on one side and sticking up at the other, making Liam look sleep worn. There’s bags under his eyes and a nasty spot on his chin. Liam looks real, like he had at every hotel breakfast and morning of waking up to the rock of the tour bus. He looks _alive_. 

Louis isn’t sure how long he spends just staring at Liam, taking in every little detail his eyes could find in hopes it would stay with him after he woke. He must spend a while at it though, in dream time, because Harry starts to laugh again and Niall comes up behind Louis to tap him gently around the ribs.

“I know Liam’s handsome and all, but it’s a bit early to be drooling at him.” Harry says, amused. He points the straw of his cup between Liam and Louis, smirk growing on his lips. “The rest of us don’t want to see those bedroom eyes, aye Niall?”

Niall ignores him, prodding Louis again. “You okay, mate? You’re a little pale. Almost more than me.”

“You’re not coming down with something, Tommo?” Liam’s just as kindly worried as he always is, was. “Maybe you shouldn’t sit too close to Harry.”

Harry snorts from his seat. Niall barks a short laugh, before giving Louis one last gentle pat and turning toward the breakfast trolley. Bacon seems to interest him more than discussing how Louis and Harry should or shouldn’t interact. Only Liam keeps his eyes on Louis.

Which, fair enough. Louis doesn’t want to quite look away either.

But he does, tearing away to survey the odds and ends on the trolley. Strange enough for a dream, he’s actually, ravenously hungry and the bacon does smell delicious. He tries to keep an eye on Liam while he loads up a plate, watching Liam sink into a nearby chair and pick at his own food. It’s surreal, both the mundaneness of the situation and how familiar it all is.

“Maybe you should have some orange juice.” Liam says, pointing his greasy fork at jug on the trolley. “It’s good for being poorly, right?”

“Vitamin C!” Niall mumbles around a bit of egg, thumping back against the bed where he’d sat on the floor. Louis spares a moment to think it strange he isn’t sitting with Harry, as usual, but maybe his dream is taking into account how strange they’d been recently.

Louis can’t think about it any further, because Harry quickly interjects, “You don’t want to sound off for the 95 Bull interview today.”

“What?” Louis asks, twisting around too quickly and knocking a bowl of toast off the trolley. It hits his feet, landing heavy and painfully across his toes. Louis yelps and jumps back, dropping to the floor to rub at the damage before his mind can catch up with him.

Liam and Niall jump up half a second after, Niall being close enough to grab the bowl from the floor and tut at the loss of the bread. “Okay there?” He asks, frowning at the mess and then at Louis’s crummy feet.

“Trying to join the broken foot club?” Harry teases, still lounging on the bed with his smoothie.

“No,” Louis says, more forceful than he means. “I’m fine.”

Everyone pauses at that. Louis is usually the worst when he’s got the slightest ache or illness. He generally likes being the center of attention and will milk any slight pain for all its worth. A normal Louis would be howling by now, putting on a show and demanding the other boys give him all their attention for the rest of breakfast. Possible for the rest of the week. Featuring foot rubs and FIFA wins. A normal Louis would be making jokes about stealing Niall’s old boot and teasing Liam for being excluded from their little boot club.

But Louis _feels_ pain. A real, genuine and sharp pain. And Harry has just mentioned an interview, one they’d given at a radio station weeks ago. One that, as Louis remembers it, had marked the start of some strange tension between him and Niall that lasted even after the funeral. Even a dreaming Louis wouldn’t want to taint a chance to see his dead friend by referencing that memory. A dreaming Louis wouldn’t feel pain.

He presses on the reddening spots at the base of his toes, hissing out a breath at the ache. His heart is thumping wildly in his chest, making his whole torso feel like a drum set. He doesn’t look up when he asks, “That interview’s today then?”

“Yes? It’s been on schedule for weeks.” Liam’s the one to answer, sounding confused. Louis can hear the clicking of his phone as Liam double checks.

“And it’s all of us going? Niall and Harry too?” Louis forces out, still pressing into the forming bruises until the skin blanches.

“If it’s a band thing then we shouldn’t be left out.” Niall snorts, knelt off to the left of Louis’s vision and cleaning up the mess the toast had made.

Louis slowly straightens and pulls his phone from his joggers. He checks the date twice, opening up the calendar app just to be sure. His hands are shaking, hard enough that hitting the right buttons takes effort.

“Did you smoke up last night Tommo? You’re acting a little, uh, off.” Liam says, frown in his voice that says he’s a moment away from Daddy Direction mode.

Louis can’t answer. He rushes to the toilet, barely making it before his empty stomach is rolling up bile into the bowl. He grips the seat with shaking hands, careening much in the same way he’d been that night at the hospital. Only this time the primary emotion isn’t anger, its fear.

The date says it is three days before the shooting. The pain says it is real.

-

Louis throws up twice more after that; when a crew member comes through to tell them to get ready to leave and all Louis can see is the blood from that night at the hospital. Then again when Liam starts to get dressed and Louis can only stare at that place on his chest that was wonderfully intact now. All Louis could think was what it looked like when it wasn’t. The vomiting is enough to convince everyone he is too sick to be going anywhere, a sentiment he hadn’t been trying for but was grateful for all the same. Liam is kind enough not to force him to leave the room. Louis knows he must look very pitiful for Liam to not even offer a token argument about it. He does tell Louis to go back to his own room when it is time to leave, citing the need for proper rest and clearly not wanting his room filled with any more germs. And now Louis is tucked up in his own hotel bed, trying to set his mind back on straight.

He has traveled back in time, somehow. Back to a time when Liam is still alive and before their lives will take such a nightmare turn. He’s sickly stuck on the conversation he had at the bar the night before, or as it seemed, would be having in around a month.  A chance to change things, that’s what the person had said then. And now, here he is.

It’s just Louis doesn’t believe in things like this. In magic or superstition or whatever that person had been selling. He doesn’t believe in much of anything, even less so after the funeral. He’s having trouble wrapping his mind around the idea the person was right and has somehow really given Louis a second chance. A shot at change. His very own replay.

He should be grateful, but mostly Louis is just afraid. Time travel is the stuff of science fiction, real only in the kind of movies Liam and Zayn used to drag him into watching before he learned that the offer of pot could weasel him out of it. He’s not supposed to be here and this isn’t supposed to be possible. It’s like being on a bad trip, the kind that makes him want to swear off everything and join Harry in detoxing. Except he’s never felt so stone cold sober. And it makes him afraid.

He really should be _doing_ something about it. At least more than curling up in his hotel bed and watching trashy midday television. But Louis feels like the second he tries doing more than being shell shocked that it’s all going to become real and something he’ll have to cope with. If it’s real than that means that Louis has only a short time frame until the shooting.  He’s going to be reliving it all over again.

Louis doesn’t think he can handle that.

-

The boys get back later than they had when Louis had been along. Louis only notices because he’s ushered to the venue before they get back and he distinctly remembers the clock on the wall when they walked in the last time. Or this time? He doesn’t want to put in the effort to understand how this works.

Harry’s through the for door first, gangly legs moving like he’s gunning for a car after a plane touchdown. His face is twisted into an unsettled frown, complexion blotchy and lip caught between his teeth.  He stumbles a bit as he hits the doorway on his dash to the hallway. They all know what a truly upset Harry looks like by now and Louis knows by previous experience for last time around that this will grow into a weeks long strop. It’s not enough to give much of the crew pause, just a few knitted brows and light whispers before everyone’s attention is back on work.

Niall’s the one to draw the attention. He’s not speed walking like Harry and his expression is carefully smooth. Everything about how he’s entered the room is carefully controlled and to any outsider he’d look fine. But the venue is filled with people who’ve been at the boys’ side for the past half-decade and who know the ins and outs of each of them. They all know Niall’s the type to shut down when he’s feeling well and truly wronged. The boy walking through the door is coldly pissed. The crew holds a collective breath while Niall finds a straggling member of the backing band and very calmly asks to go over his guitar parts. Louis doesn’t think anyone dares speak until Niall’s disappeared out the opposite door and when he does, a low murmur of worry starts up.

Liam’s looking just as concerned as everyone else, if not more so. The frown looks almost like a childish pout on his face, but he’s eyes are filled with the serious worry they’d learned to associate with ‘Daddy Direction’. Liam is slow to make it over to Louis, pausing here and there to stare pitifully at the door the other boys took. He doesn’t greet Louis, or Lottie as she’s taken up post by her brother’s side, just sighs heavily and sinks into the seat next to them.

  
Since he and the crew arrived at the venue, he’s been sprawled out on one of the couches with his sister. Lottie’s being extra nice to him, not because some said he’s sick since she would normally just take the piss of him for that, but Louis suspects it’s because he actually looks like shit.  So the jokes at his expense have been rather mild and she hasn’t made one disturbing mention about how good his bandmates look.  But now that they’re filing through the main area, she’s up and shooting off behind Harry with barely a word to her brother. It’s not unexpected but Louis still feels slightly sad for it anyway. 

Liam waits until she’s left to round up on Louis, voice quick and wavering. “They’re fighting, I think. I didn’t see it but one moment everything’s fine and the next they won’t look at each other. I thought Harry was going to cry on the way back.” He stops for breath, bites his lip and finally looks Louis in the eye. “Oh. Sorry. Are you better?”

_No_ , Louis wants to say. “Yes,” he says instead.

Liam gives him a little half smile, clearly pleased but too worried to let it take over his whole face as he usually does. It all makes Louis a little sick again from the want to see that scrunched up smile one more time. He swallows it down heavily, fingers groping at the cushions uselessly for a water bottle. He folds his hands back on his lap when he finds nothing and juts his chin to the door, signaling Liam to continue.

“They’re fighting,” Liam says again, frown tugging at his features. He looks more distressed than a little tit between the boys’ warrants, but Louis knows, or remembers, that’s how Liam took every little disagreement in the time since Zayn left. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop, always sure that every raised voice or roll of the eye was a sign of an end. “I don’t know over what.”

“Knowing those two, they’ve just been cooped up together too long.” Louis reasons, resisting the urge to reach out and smooth out the lines forming between Liam’s eyes. He’s a little calmer than he was back at the hotel, but Louis still feels sentiment burning bile in his throat. “We all snap, Liam.”

“Yes, but-“ Liam stops, chews his lip hard and hunches over his lap. He glances quickly from the door to Louis. Finally, he concedes, “They’ve been together a lot the past few days.”

“See?” Louis shrugs, forcing a smile for Liam’s benefit. “You’re worrying over nothing.”

Liam doesn’t look convinced, but he drops it when Louis swings his legs over into his lap. Louis digs his toes into Liam’s thigh, and feels the knot in his stomach loosen just a little when Liam complains about the smell. Liam pokes at the bones of his ankles but doesn’t shove him off, and let’s Louis change the topic to the interview. He’s knows what the questions will be, but at least Liam starts to really smile when talking about the fit interviewer and the silly color game they’d been forced to play.

-

The show goes on as usual, Harry and Niall have at least either made up enough to get along on stage or are exercising the ‘professionalism’ their manager is always harping on about. Louis can’t help but feel better being out on stage, himself. Even with all the worry pressing down on him, he stops thinking about blood and hospitals and guns the second the music starts and the crowd begins to chant. It’s easy to forget everything with the beat in his veins, and when he hangs off Liam for half the night it’s because of the adrenalin, not anything else.

When they get back to the hotel, he crowds into Liam’s room. Louis really doesn’t want to feel sick again, not after the high of the show and so he forces Liam into taking shots from the minibar. They play FIFA and order room service nachos and Louis makes himself comfy in Liam’s bed before the lad can ask him to leave.

He wakes there, half hanging off the side and wrapped in most of the comforter. He’s heads pounding like it should after a night of drinking and he can still taste jalapenos on his breath. Louis rolls away from the edge carefully and comes face to face with the expanse of Liam’s back.  For a moment, Louis let’s himself remember the day before and the day before that. He watches Liam breathe and reaches out to just barely touch his t-shirt, just over the spot Louis knew that in that future would been stained red. Liam does nothing but breathe a little louder and curl into himself.

Louis smiles and slips out of bed. He goes back to his own room to get some more sleep and a shower. For the moment, he’s convinced everything is just fine.

-

He spends much of the morning puttering around his room aimlessly. Try as he might, he hadn’t been able to get back to sleep and there was nothing good on television to distract him. He could go back to Liam’s room, but he’d forced more alcohol on the other than himself. Louis knew when to let the poor guy rest. He could always stop by again later.

Instead he checks and rechecks everything he can on the internet. Every social media site and new outlet, get rebelliously looked over until he’s eyes start to water from reading the tiny text off his phone screen. Nothing is telling Louis about any shooting accidents or pop star mishaps or giving him any reason to believe that time travel has suddenly become a real possibility.

It really doesn’t make him feel better like he thought it would.

So he had time traveled, possibly. Honestly, he’s beginning to doubt that idea. Perhaps it was just a strangely realistic dream. So he’d known what questions the interviewer would ask, that wasn’t unusual. They were asked practically the same things time after time. He could definitely predict interviews in his sleep. And so he knew Harry and Niall would fight. He hadn’t lied when he told Liam that they all fussed now and again. It was natural.

None of it meant that he has powers or anything freaky like that. None of it has to mean Liam was going to die. And even if he did, and it did, he didn’t have to let it happen. He’d skipped the interview. Things were already different.

Louis holds on to that as the rest of the hotel finally starts to come to life around him.

-

Their day off is blessedly quite. It’s eerily similar to the timeline he thought he knew and consciously different. Liam shows up at noon, yawning and still in pajamas, but begging Louis into going out for lunch. When they finally clean up and make it out, its half past two and the dinner they opt for is packed with workers on break.  Louis orders the same thing he remembers ordering before, a burger so greasy he can barely stand it and a milkshake with too much chocolate syrup. Liam complains under his breath about the bacon being too limp and the chips being cold, but smiles brightly at the waitress instead of taking the issue up with her.

When they get back to the hotel, Louis forces his way back into Liam’s room again, ignoring the questioning gaze he gets and settling on Liam’s bed. They spent the rest of the day playing video games, Louis winning every round of FIFA and losing at the old martial arts game Liam pulls out. By the end of the night, they’re both curled up at the edge of Liam’s bed with a pile of snacks and beer between them. There’s a marathon of old cowboy movies on, and usually Louis would use it as an excuse to start a ‘take a shot’ movement, but Liam’s still looking a little green from the night before. So Louis is suffering through John Wayne’s acting mostly sober and wishing the hotel hadn’t fried the chips so crisp.

-

The day is upon him and Louis still wavers between believing it was all just a terrible dream and letting anxiety burn a hole in his gut every time he connects the small day to day of their lives to one he’d lived before. There’s a stone weighing on Louis every time he considers what will or could happen but some part of him knows he has to do something about it. If there’s a chance it could come true, he has to try to stop it. Louis knows that.

It still doesn’t make him stop Liam from going out that night.

He rationalizes it in different ways, by not drinking as much, by sticking to Liam like glue the entire time they spend on the club floor. He nearly follows Liam into the bathroom, only stopping because Liam grabs him by the shoulders and sends Louis off after shots instead. It’s a very Liam way of begging for space, in that he really doesn’t ask for it at all. And he doesn’t seem to mind when Louis melds back to his side the second he comes back.

Louis has a hard time getting into the mood to party, and he knows Liam notices. He uses it to his advantage; when Liam asks if he’s feeling well Louis lies and begs off to the hotel early. Liam, dutiful as ever, follows.  Louis tries to keep the relief off his face, but the concerned looks from Liam tells him that he’s being transparent. It hardly matters. Let Liam thank he’s just glad to leave and really is that ill. He can put up with a little coddling in exchange for peace of mind.

They arrive back to the hotel hours before they had in Louis’s previous experience. There’s barely enough people congregated at the doors to be considered a crowd and he’s nearly positive some of them are just other guests. Louis already feels giddy, like a child about to get away with a bold lie. He shoots out of the car first, because of it. Liam follows behind, laughing at Louis’s behavior and waving to the all of three girls who seem to be there to see them.

It’s fine, Louis thinks, it’s all fine.

Then he notices that one of the girls isn’t smiling like the others. There’s fury in her eyes, enough to knock the wind out of him and make his joints freeze up. He stumbles forward, catching Liam’s attention before their security team. Liam turns to help, back to the girl who is pulling a handgun from her jacket pocket and aiming it at center mass. Louis remembers the red stain on the back on Liam’s shirt and a scream strangles in his throat.

There’s not enough time to say something to the guards. All eyes are on him in that moment, on the near fall and the panic in his face. It takes the closest one only half a second to realize the fear is a signal to turn around, but it’s a half second too long. There’s a crack and screams and Liam falling into Louis. They sprawl onto the sidewalk, but Louis doesn’t feel the impact.

The shot sounds louder from out here, he thinks as he stares up at the corner of the door awning and the blackness of the night sky beyond. It is still quieter than he expected from action movies, but it sounds more real out here. It has more weight. Or maybe it’s just that Louis isn’t drunk this time and has his sense sharp.

Faces swim in and out of his vision, guards shouting above him and strangers peering down with frightened frowns. He thinks they ask how he is, or not to move, or something that he can’t really focus on. Louis frowns back, or tries to at least as his face feels funny and numb in weird places. He doesn’t like that they’re blocking the view. He tries to turn his head to keep looking at the starless sky, but, oh.

Pain explodes through him, paralyzing and white hot. His stomach rolls hotly in protest and its nothing compared to the drills buzzing in his brain, stabbing at his eye balls and making an ache slide down his face into his teeth. Louis stops before he’s so much as shift his eyes, stuck in place by the sharp waves of it pressing through him. The panic must be back on his face because someone urges him to stay still again, voice sharper and harsher now. Louis can’t refuse.

The pain is centered around the back of Louis’s brain, he can tell that much. Which is strange, because hadn’t there been a gunshot? Rationale says that he should be hurting in the front, how he was facing that girl before he fell. Liam was the one hurt from the back. Not Louis.

Louis remembers the weight on his front belatedly, only as more is added from someone leaning in to check Liam’s pulse. Liam is plastered to Louis’s stomach, chin digging into soft love handles and elbow uncomfortably close to the high meat of Louis’s thigh. Even though he knows that he should be feeling the pressure of another body on top of his, its barely registering.  Liam has a few good stones on him, with all that muscle and extra height. Louis knows it should hurt, it always had when they were play wrestling around the lounge and Liam pinned him. But it feels distant now, like holding someone in water.

He can’t force himself to look down to see Liam, to see if he’s awake or breathing. But he takes a little solace in that he can’t feel much anyway. He thinks Liam could be fidgeting about and Louis wouldn’t know it. Louis is a little more concerned with that lack of feeling.

Everything either hurts or is numb and Louis can’t decide which should be a bigger red flag. He’s become more aware with every passing second and shout from the group crowed around him that it’s not only Liam in trouble this time.  He’s hurt too, or maybe the only one and weird dual sensation of pain and nothingness makes him think maybe he got the bullet this time. Maybe he’s dying.

He doesn’t get time to panic about the bleak though before Liam’s lifting off of him. Even if he barely feels the lack of weight, he can just see it from the corner of his eyes. Liam’s mussed hair and forehead, and when he shifts, a bit of shoulder covered in blue plaid. Liam’s snapback had stayed on. It’s a strange, almost funny detail. Louis feels a little relived.

Liam’s not dead. Crisis averted. Now if only someone would make his headache stop and let him sleep a week, things could be fine.

Someone leans in low, breathing almost directly into Louis’s face. They’re speaking about pupil dilation and blood loss. It’s reminiscent of the dream he once had, where Liam was gone and he’d spent a night screaming in a hospital bathroom. He can’t remember what happened beyond that, but Louis thinks it was a nightmare. At least now, the woman talking above him is kind of pretty instead of a graying doctor explaining to roomful of bloody guards about death. Louis wants to smile, thinks he almost does.

The woman shines lights in his eyes, touches his neck over and over. Her voice wavers from loud shouting to calming, low lines. He thinks she’s trying to comfort him, but Louis can’t remember what for.  He’s not feeling that bad, actually. The pain’s just sort of slipping away, leaving him in someplace that’s cloudy, but comfortable. He wishes his vision wasn’t so blurry, but it’s not like he’s not felt that after long nights with too many shots so he’s not worried about it. Or anything. Really, he’s only a little worried about how scared the woman looks floating over him. Maybe someone should come and soothe her. Louis would try but he can’t make his mouth work. Liam should. Liam was good at that kind of thing.

He closes his eyes for a while, just to blink away the haze but he finds he can’t make himself open them back again. Everyone’s loud and shouting about other stuff anyway, so he doesn’t think there’s anything for him to see. Someone keep saying they lost them both. Gunshots. Head wounds. Blood loss. It all sounds like someone else’s problem. Not Louis’s.

Liam’s not dead. Crisis averted. Now he’s just going to sleep until Liam forces him up for bus call.

-

He wakes startled and feeling the phantom echoes of a head ache. His phone vibrates wildly on the bedside table, threatening to fall off to the carpet. He rescues it just a second before it does, bringing it up to cradle against his chest. Louis is still foggy and disoriented, rubbing at the back of his skull like it will take away the odd sleep pains. It was such an odd dream, he thinks as he thumbs through his passcodes and opens his messages. He can’t really remember it but he thinks it was something like a nightmare.

He blinks down at his phone screen, letting a few moments pass before he can let the words sink in.

-Brekkie in Liams room !!-

He lets the phone fall into his lap and turns to scream bloody murder into his pillow.

-

He thinks he hides his panic better, this time around. He doesn’t stare at Liam like some lovelorn puppy, he doesn’t throw up and insist on staying in. Louis feels a little too dead for that.

It’s occurred to him, finally and again that this is real. He’s going back and forth through time and he’s seen death snatch Liam twice. Last time, Louis realizes coldly, he’d died too.

So he keeps his mouth shut all the way to the interview, working solely on autopilot to get cleaned up and dressed. Any other day he might find it a little depreciatingly humorous that he doesn’t have to put much effort into, thanks to his reputation of being on the unhygienic side. His mind can’t make room for humor today though, so he doesn’t so much as crack a smile as the joke passes through his thoughts.

Up until they reach the studio, Louis isn’t sure he can actually go through with the interview. At least not with the talking. He’s certain he’ll be keeping quiet, letting Liam and Harry do most of the talking. Most interviewers only have eyes for Harry anyway, desperate for flirting or mention of Taylor or little screw up that they could smear all over social media. It wouldn’t be hard to stay in the background for once; they’d all done it a time or two before. 

But he knew how this one would play out, knew Niall would be spitting fire and Harry would be just as much of a wreck as he felt now. Louis already knew he’d have to step up and divert attention, suddenly wasn’t sure how Liam had handled it in the timeline he’d left the lad to do it alone.  But it was what they did, taking care of each other via smoke and mirrors. It was one of the few things he’d been good at.

He thinks, briefly, if he can only stop the fight that he can avoid that duty. Just for this timeline.

-

Turns out, he can’t.

-

“So you went back. Even after you-“ Niall’s voice cuts off, clipped and cold and every inch Irish fury that Louis doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. He’s seen Niall angry, of course, they all had. After Ed wrote that song that had Niall up half the night grumbling on the phone with Elle. After the weed video leaked. After he found dirty laundry airing on a girl he’d being seeing and starting seeing red instead. After Zayn. All that anger seemed pale in comparison to fury now. Because Niall looks more than angry, he looks well and truly hurt. He looks heart broken.

Louis realizes that there’s no avoiding this drag out. It’s more than some petty row, and even if the other boy’s car hadn’t beat him to the studio by half an hour, he was always going to be too late. He’d walked in on the climax to something that had been building a lot longer than he could go back to fix.

Neither Niall nor Harry seem to notice Louis has slipped into the room. The air is heavy and electric, and the space between them might have been symbolic if he’d had the energy to put it into lyrics. The tune from the last album echoes in his mind, making him wince. The first to say goodbye, he thinks and wants to puke again. He thinks of Liam and he watches his friends set fire in front of him.

“You know that’s not what it meant,” Harry says. His tone is the sharp bite Louis has learned to associate with Harry’s rage, but his stance sells regret and guilt. He’s trying to make himself smaller in the empty space of the room, hunched into himself and chin nearly touching his chest.

“I don’t.” Niall says. There’s finality there and it seems to shock Harry. Louis thinks it would shock him too, if he knew what this was about. Niall’s not the type for ultimatums. “I don’t know that. Or anything. You don’t let me know anything. You expect me to understand it without giving me anything to work with.”

“How am I supposed to do that Harry? How do I know things that you don’t seem to know yourself?” Niall continues, tensing up to the point Louis feels irrational fear for the lad’s joints. “Under all that vague shit, do you even know what you want?”

“That’s not fair,” Harry starts quickly, the whine in his voice familiar. He licks his lips, shifting nervously in place and tugging at his hair. “You can’t expect me to have all the answers, Niall. It’s not fair.”

“Yes, it is.” Niall isn’t backing down. He seems bigger, puffed up in his irritation. His accent is deepening, making him both harder to understand and more terribly clear in meaning. Niall had always been the most adaptable, the easiest to pull with the flow and mold to suit the situation. But that only came because he was the steadiest, knowing himself and where he stood, and using that knowledge to let the fleeting parts change for another’s comfort. When he truly felt he needed to, he put his foot down and anchored until the tide changed for _him_. This was an anchored moment. It was clear to see that he wasn’t going to budge.

Harry knows it. Louis could tell it was killing him.

“What do you want Harry?”

Harry shakes his head, taking a trembling step back like the force of Niall’s words had struck him square in the chest. His resolve is crumbling under the weight of Niall’s. He can’t even look at Niall now. Louis can’t look away.

Niall takes this non-answer as one, nodding once in a jerky motion. “Right then. That’s what I needed to know.”

Niall doesn’t sound or look angry anymore. He looks exhausted, disappointed. Neither has ever been a good look on Niall. But mostly Niall just looks resigned. Niall turns on heel and stalks out of the room, stride careful and measured, face slipping into something careful and blank. The door doesn’t even slam.

But Harry gasps out like Niall stole the air from the room with his departure. He stumbles back until he hits against a chair, then fails to meet it when he falls to sit. He crashes to the floor, gripping a chair leg and sprawling like a fallen toddler. He stares at the closed door and when Louis finally takes a breath, he stares at Louis too.

Harry looks more vulnerable than Louis has seen him since the early days. His red rimmed, glassy eyes and splotchy face make him younger, more like the kid who’d been so eager to move in with his cool, older bandmate. It’s the Harry that used to look up to Louis, used to let every small compliment and sharp remark build him up and tear him down in turns. The kid who spent hours online letting the masses give him worth and running to cry to Louis when they didn’t. It’s a Harry Louis hasn’t seen in such a long time, and he doesn’t know if that’s due to the younger lad toughing up or the lack of attention on Louis’s part.

“What happened?” Louis asks, even though he already knows and even though he’d seen enough of the fight to realize he’s stepping blindly into a mine field. The nostalgia gives him a need to say something, to be that boy again who could make things better with well-placed jokes and a cuddle. The pain in the air is too visceral for him to stay quiet.

But Harry looks at him now with confusion instead of blind admiration. “It’s….it’s nothing Lou.” Harry swallows and very visibly gathers himself back together. It’s oddly intimate, and also overwhelmingly sad. The tone and the neutral set of his jaw are classic PR moves; an intention to minimize and put on a brave front to the world. This is Harry’s public persona, made for fans and paps and nosy interviewers. “I’m fine. Just a little row. We have them all the time, don’t we all? Just needs some time to cool off, yeah?”

Harry rises to shaky feet and stumbles off, leaving Louis with a tight smile and false reassurance. Louis feels a little sick to his stomach with guilt. Since when was Harry treating him like that? Like an outsider? Brushing him off when he’s clearly seen something huge and hurtful and that requires the help of a friend? He knows their friendship has changed and cooled over the years, Louis knows there’s a certain distance between them now, but he’s always thought that nothing could change that underlying bond of band, of brotherhood. Try as he might, he can’t think of when things changed. He can’t remember when he stopped paying attention to what was in front of him.

Maybe Zayn wasn’t the only friendship he’d lost. Maybe it wasn’t even the first.

-

The interview is the same as he remembers it, really. The woman speaking to them is fit, large chest, shapely hips and a low cut dress. She starts off cordial enough, greeting them all with a handshake. Harry is the last into the room and the second she spots him, Louis knows that her attention will be on him the whole time. He remembers that part pretty clear.

It never stops being weird, watching these women so blatantly hit on his friend while the rest get ignored and cameras keep rolling. Harry is clearly not into it today, his eyes still a little glassy from the cry Louis thinks he must be holding in. Liam adjusts their seating arrangement so he’s closer to the interviewer, acting as a buffer. Louis slips in the space between Harry and Niall, filling it before anyone can question the distance the two are keeping

“We’re so glad to be here with One Direction today!” She starts as soon as the camera man gives the go ahead. Louis can see the others put their game faces on from either side. “Welcome, boys. Hello.”

They murmur out their greetings, Liam’s more chipper than the rest. Harry barely so much as nods in acknowledgement, but he’s the only one the interviewer is looking at. The interview starts out much like the rest, a few questions about how they are and what they’ve got planned for the future. Liam takes most of it, but Louis finds himself speaking up too, just to keep the attention from falling on the other two. It’s instinct really, because all he wants to do is stay silent and brood like Niall is. But this kind of thing is second nature and even in all his misery he can’t really abandon the boys here with him.

Even if the bantering with Liam makes him feel so much worse, all things considered.

They end up playing a stupid game, one he distinctly remembers hating. Picking colored cards that he swears belongs to some board game Lux has made them play in green rooms before, and answering questions corresponding to a little coded chart.

He’d picked red the last time and gotten a stupid question about their last single. He wasn’t in the mood to dodge a Taylor question in Harry’s stead. He takes yellow now instead.

Liam gets a question about who they’d like to work with, listing off producers Louis knows he’s met with a few times before. Harry talks about emotions and experiences in a vague reply to a question about twitter. Niall gives a short, nearly rude response to a question about their last music video that makes their crew in the room collectively frown.

Louis gets asked about Zayn.

“We know you lost a member recently. Some fans think this new album has a lot to say about him. Have you spoken to Zayn at all?”

Louis thinks of what he said that night, every angry curse that he’d hurled. It was, and would be, the first time they really spoke since the fall out, no matter what little lies he told in interviews. Reaching out had only happened when the world was falling down around them.

“Louis?”

“I-“ Louis hesitates, feeling that angry burn again in his throat. The fury is followed swiftly by that same miserable funk he’d been in since he woke up and realized he’d died, Liam died again. He swallows thickly. “It’s been a few weeks.” He tries wildly to think of before this all starting and the answers he’d been giving in those interviews. What had he said? Two weeks in that interview at the radio station, or was it a few days at the youtube special? “Distance, you know, sometimes you have to give people a little distance. Let them do their own thing.”

The interviewer nods like he’s said something grand and sage. She leans forward with her elbows on her knees. If he glanced down, Louis could see down her shirt, can tell that’s what’s caught Liam’s eye from the way he shifts across Harry. “So that’s what you boys are doing, letting him do his own thing?”

“Yeah.” Liam speaks up. “You have to let people do what makes them happy, right?”

“And you’re still friends?”

“Of course,” Liam says. Louis plasters on a smile to look like he’s agreeing. He’s not surprised that the other two aren’t even trying that much.

-

That night, instead of knocking on Liam’s door, Louis knocks on Niall’s. 

Its obvious Niall wasn’t expecting company; he opens the door in nothing but low slung briefs and a face scrubbed raw. He frowns deeply when he sees Louis, brows knitting in confusion and eyes skittering to the left and right for anyone else. After a moment of seeing no one, Niall steps back to let Louis slip inside.

“What?” Niall starts, gruff and annoyed.

Louis startles at the tone. Niall looks at him with accusation, shoulders set like he’s expecting a fight. Louis racks his brain, trying to think of what he’d done to upset Niall lately. It’s getting harder to remember just what happened before he started to jump timelines, but for the most part he and Niall had always gotten along. They’d been better even, in the past year, in the past months since Zayn left. The only thing he knows that Niall has been upset about lately is Harry.

“You don’t need to be in the middle of it, Lou.” Niall says, still fixing Louis with something like a glare.

Louis shakes his head quickly, thinking of the fighting he’d witnessed. Niall hadn’t acknowledged him during it, but of course that didn’t mean Niall hadn’t noticed. And now he thought that Louis was here to chide him about it, possibly to take Harry’s side. And yes, Louis sort of wants to sort it out. He hates seeing the boys really get into it. But right now he just wants sort out himself and get as roaring drunk as he could stand.

“All I want to be in the middle of is a bar.” Louis said, shrugging and trying to appear flippant. “I just wanted to see if you were up for it tonight.”

Niall goes from a bristled cat to confused, deflating down. His frown stays. “Don’t you usually drag Liam out for that?”

Louis shrugs again. “I can’t hang out with my favorite Irishman anymore?”

“You can, but you don’t.” Niall is nothing but blunt today, it seems.

“I do-“

“Not for a while.” Niall sits on the edge of his bed, cocking his head at Louis. “I don’t mind it. Not surprised with you being all about Liam lately.”

“I haven’t-“ Louis starts, but Niall looks thoroughly unimpressed, so he lets the protest fizzle out. He doesn’t have it in him to fight back about it.

That seems to actually concern Niall.

“Look, do you want to go out or am I going by myself?” Louis grumbles, looking away from Niall’s searching eyes.

Niall makes a production of sighing and standing. “Fine. But get out of my room so I can change. Don’t need you perving on me, yeah?”

-

They end up at a different club than the one he’s been going to with Liam. It’s still a nice place, packed with young people and playing okay music. There’s a lot of variety in the drinks, so it’s a win in Louis’s book. The VIP section hosts a few business people and young socialites. A couple of small time TV actors are there and a baseball player that Niall stares at until he leaves. They can already tell they’re going to be mostly left alone from unimpressed looks they receive, but that suits Louis just fine tonight.

He really just wants to get drunk and forget.

Neither he nor Niall try for much conversation until well after the third round. It might actually account for why everyone’s ignoring them. They’re both cast in an air of gloom, sad sacks sitting around getting drunk in the middle of the week instead of trying to have any fun like the other twenty-somethings in the room. Niall has that particular broodily pissed face on that screams he might lash out at anyone who tries to talk to him and Louis is sure he doesn’t look much better. They’re rotten company.

“You know why I’m drinking,” Niall starts after another shot. Niall doesn’t so much as grimace, something Louis can’t manage no matter how much he drinks. Damn that Irish blood.

“You never turn down a drink,” Louis mutters. Niall flashes him a grumpy look.

“Why are you drinking?” Niall finishes, setting down his shot glasses a little too hard. They both jump at the sharp noise.

Louis doesn’t answer for a while, stalling by calling over for more drinks and staring out over the dance floor. The music is loud and too cheerfully sensual for his mood. There’s a few couples all but have sex on the floor. A fight is breaking out in the corner that he thinks was started over a spilled beer. He can’t hear from here. But the smaller boy is standing his ground against the bulky meathead, looking vicious despite his size. Louis is sort of rooting for him.

Niall gives him a few minutes and other shot before prodding further. “Is it about the interview? Since they asked about him.”

Him. In all this time Niall has more or less refused to say the name unless truly prompted. Defense mechanisms, Louis thinks, frowning when the larger man knocks against the smaller’s shoulders. The little one gives a shove of his own.

“No.”

“No.” Niall repeats, tapping his nails on the table. “Liam then?”

“What?” Louis tears away from the fight, frowning heavily in Niall’s general direction. The shots are getting to him quicker than he’d thought; things are already getting a little blurred at the edges. Maybe he should have eaten something before they left.

“Liam?” Niall shrugs. “You were looking at him pretty odd this morning.”

“I wasn’t,” Louis protests.

“You were,” Niall says and shrugs again, like it doesn’t really concern him. “You have a fight?”

Louis wants to shoot back by asking about the fight with Harry. He looks back at the physical fight downstairs, words burning at the tip of his tongue. The smaller guy kicks the large one right at the kneecaps. It’s a low blow. Louis keeps his mouth shut.

Niall nods anyway. “I get it though, you two are so close. Sucks to fight with someone like that.” He sounds so bitter than Louis has to wince.

“No closer than the rest of us,” Louis says weakly.

Niall snorts. “That’s a lie.”

The fight with Harry really must be weighing on Niall for him to be continuing this. Louis doesn’t like it. Niall only calls him on his shit when he’s truly deserving of it. Right now, Louis can’t think of anything he’s done to warrant it.

“You don’t have a hundred pictures on your phone of the rest of us.” Niall points out, sipping at his beer. “You don’t come to the rest of us with every little joke or story or night out. You never let me get away with beating you at a game.”

“I don’t-“

“Last time I beat you at FIFA you didn’t speak to me for three days.” Niall deadpans. “Liam beat you twice at COD last week and you bought him a bottle of vodka.”

Louis snaps his mouth shut.

“Only other person you were that nice to was, Za-, him.” Niall trips over it, frowning. “You weren’t event that obsessed with Harry when you two were attached at the hip.”

“That’s not- You’re being stupid, Niall.” Louis presses back into his seat, turning his face away defiantly. He watches the fight again, watches security edge towards it. “What are you getting at?”

“Just that it sucks to fight with people you have feelings for.”

The bigger man strikes the smaller across the face. Even from up here, Louis can see the spurt of blood that follows. Bile rises in his throat as the smaller man drops below the crowd and security finally ends things.

“I don’t.” He says, strangled. He grips his glasses tight against the condensation, swallowing large gulps of beer in effort to keep from vomiting. “That’s not it.”

“Isn’t it?” Niall doesn’t look like he’s gunning for a confrontation on this. He just looks weary. Like he had in that room before the interview. “It’s not been long since he and Soph, you know? You got to think about that.”

“That’s not it. Shut up, Niall!” Louis knows the hysteria trying to climb into his tone isn’t helping, but Niall is sitting there so sad and calm that it’s making Louis blood boil and ice over in turns. “What the fuck are you trying to do? This isn’t what’s going on with you and Harry.”

His aim is disgustingly on the mark. Niall’s face twists painfully. If Louis hadn’t already half guessed what the crux of the boy’s fighting had been earlier, this told him everything he needed to know.

“I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt.” Niall says, voice tight and measured. He’s trying to reign it back in and bring Louis back down with him.

Louis won’t have any of that. “Maybe you should have tried that for yourself.”

-

They leave shortly after that, both more miserable than ever. He knows logically that fighting with Niall wasn’t making things any better and maybe he should really consider why he was getting so worked up over some little accusation of a crush, but he’d rather stay upset. Anger, sometimes, feels good. It’s tastes better than sadness, at least.

He holds up in his hotel room the next day, refusing to come out and see anyone. He can’t deal with the idea of running into Niall and hearing any more. Louis doesn’t want to be the thing Niall takes his problems out on. He doesn’t need that projection. He doesn’t want to see how miserable Niall really is; it might make him reconsider his grudge.

At some point though, he needs food and orders enough room service to feed a small village. Apparently, getting a trolley sent up is enough to alert the hall that he’s up and alive, because he gets a knock at the door barely moments after. Louis peeks through the peep hole, already fired up. If it’s Niall, he’s not sure if he plans to ignore it or open up to let the other boy have it out. But it’s Liam instead, and he opens without any theatrics.

Liam looks worried again. Louis knows before he opens his mouth that Liam’s heard about the fight with Niall and is here to clear things up. Daddy Direction to the rescue again. Their glue stick. Louis snorts and shoves chips at Liam before the lecture can start.

“Hungry?” He deflects, stalking back to the bed and grabbing the overly spicy chicken fingers. Louis stares resolutely at the crappy made for TV movie he found on, sucking pepper off his fingertips. He leaves Liam to close the door and slowly make his way across the room.

“You got a lot.” Liam observes. He sits gingerly beside Louis.

Louis doesn’t want to be, but he’s hyperaware of Liam’s every movement. Even if he wants to believe Niall was simply projecting, the words are getting to him and messing with his head. “I was hungry.”

“Niall would like this.” Liam says carefully.

Louis stiffens. “I’m not in the mood Liam.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Liam plows on, bitterly. “I don’t know much about what’s going on these days. But I don’t like that everyone’s fighting.”

Louis feels marginally relieved that Liam doesn’t know what the fight, if it can be called that, was really about. He doesn’t want to have to deny having feelings to the boy’s face. It would be weird, he tells himself. And it would hurt. Louis is so tired of hurting.

“We’ll get over it.” Louis says, shrugging. He already knows it’s true. He won’t hold the grudge against Niall forever. Not with how sad Niall already is. “Haven’t I told you before? We all snap sometimes.”

“You’ve probably said something like that before.” Liam sighs. “I just don’t like it. Everyone seems so…” He trails off and gestures around the room. Chips fall on the bed and he frowns. “I don’t know. I want everyone to be happier, I guess.”

Louis feels a lump forming in his throat. “Right. You know what? We have the day off. What do you say to some drinks?”

“Isn’t it a bit early to go out?” Liam says, confused at the conversation shift.

“We got a minibar right here, don’t we?” Louis replies, already getting up and making for the fridge. “Let’s put this food to some use, huh?”

-

They get drunk.

Louis can’t remember the last time he’s gotten so pissed on hotel liquor, but it happens. The weed he dug out from his pack might have helped. Louis can’t actually remember when he thought to get his joints but right now he thinks it was a brilliant idea. Everything right now seems like a brilliant idea.

Liam won’t stop saying so.

“This was brilliant, Louis,” he says for the fourth time within the hour flopping back on the bed with a deep, content sigh.  The movement sends bits of rubbish bouncing into the air and into the floor. They’d gotten more room service somewhere around the second joint.

“I’m always brilliant,” Louis mutters, fingertips trying to catch at his lighter again. He’s crossed legged at the edge of the bed, trying and failing to remember what movie they’d put on. There’s a lot of punching involved.

“You are,” Liam agrees, warm and pleasant. He rolls across the bed until he can press his knee against Louis’s.

Louis succeeds in getting the light, both boys cheer softly. He sets the end of the mostly gone joint and takes a long drag before offering it to Liam. Liam shakes his head, burrows closer. Louis sucks down harder than he intended, trying to cover up the urge to do something stupid.

Liam looks nice like this. Soft and rumpled, like he’s been rolling on high thread count all day. His hair is a mess and his cheeks are pleasantly flushed from the combination of weed and vodka. There’s sleepiness in his eyes; Louis would bet good money that if he stays quiet long enough, Liam will be out in less than twenty.  Liam’s tank has ridden up, showing off a flash of stomach and the hair trail. Louis is fairly sure that the boy hasn’t bothered to shower yet today.

It shouldn’t be attractive, but it is. It wouldn’t have been, Louis is still in his own mind enough to know, if Niall hadn’t gone and put thoughts in his head. But Niall did feel the need to divulge, project and now Louis can’t stop glancing back to the defined abs. Can’t stop thinking.

It’s all bullshit because he wanted to drink to stop thinking.

He’s not really upset about it, not right now. He’s perfectly lubricated with all the smoke and liquid luck, and all his panic over the situation is rather dim. He’ll worry about it later, for now Liam is wiggling again and his joggers are slipper lower and lower.

“I think things are going to be okay. Don’t you?” Liam asks, scratching at his stomach.

Louis stares a few moments, trying to figure out where the conversation is and what he’s agreeing to. He nods anyway, adding in a shrug just in case that’s not right and sucks down on the last of the joint. He blows a few rings over Liam’s head, delighting in the quiet laugh he gets in return.

“Even if Harry and Niall are in a row, we’ll be fine. They’ll fix it.” Liam says again after a moment, lazily reaching up to touch the smokey haze.

“Niall just needs to get his head on straight,” Louis says without thinking.

“Why Niall?” Liam is sitting up now. Then laying back again, hand on his forehead. “Did you two talk? Did you fix things without me?”

“I’m not doing anything _without_ you.” Louis rolls his eyes, stubs out the joint in the smoke tray.

“Promise?”

Louis turns, looking back to Liam’s face. His expression is open, vulnerable. He’s looking at Louis like he’s promising the world, not something so small and stupid. He’s looking at Louis with trust. Trust Louis knows he doesn’t deserve, not yet.

Louis carefully lays back with Liam, looking him levelly in the eye. He reaches out a hand for Liam’s, trying to clear out the lump in his throat. “I promise. All for you. Not without.”

Liam smiles, bright and blinding and wonderful.

Logically, Louis should know that this is all just meaningless drunk talk. Logically, he knows that Liam has no idea what Louis is talking about. Logically, Louis knows he should leave. He should go back to his room and think about how he’s going to deal with the real problems of tomorrow. He shifts forward and kisses Liam instead.

It’s not the best, as far as kisses go. Louis knows he’s done better, can imagine that Liam has too. It’s a bit too dry and Liam is mostly slack jawed in shock up till the end, when he starts kissing back in an awkwardly endearing way. Louis pulls away slowly, watches Liam watch him.

Liam still looks so open and questioning and- And Louis can’t do this.

He’s crying before he even realizes it, tears running hot down his cheeks. The first sob seems to scare Liam up into sitting, body clumsy from all the alcohol. Louis can’t even make himself sit up, just rolls onto his stomach and cries bitterly into Liam’s pillows.

“Louis? Louis, what’s wrong?” Liam is hovering now, placing a heavy hand on Louis’s back. “Oh, Lou. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean to- I know that with everything everyone says about Harry-“

“No,” Louis chokes out, harsh and wet. “You’re here.”

“Yes?”

Louis shakes his head into the comforter, strangling on his words. “You’re here but you won’t be. I’ve seen it already, lived it already. I can’t save you. I don’t know how! I can’t stop you from dying, Liam. And here I am snogging like nothing’s wrong and…” He trails off, chest too tight to continue.

“What?” Liam mutters above him, smoothing back Louis’s ratty hair. But Louis won’t answer. It’s too much to keep thinking about. It’s easier to cry and cry and let Liam rub his back until he falls asleep like that.

-

The next morning Louis slips out before Liam wakes up, leaving the room as quietly as he can. He locks himself in the bath of his own hotel room, gathered up with what’s left of his stash and his spare lighter. He smokes and smokes until his lungs start to hurt, trying to block out the bubbling panic with the calm mellow of his weed. It’s not working well.

He kissed his best friend. He kissed his soon to be dead best friend. He’s pretty sure that crosses a ton of friendship lines that were best left alone, breaks every bro code. The nearly dead part probably went against every moral convention his mother ever tried to instill in him. It was fucked up, _he_ was fucked up.  And that wasn’t even getting into the fact he has such a sudden thing for his best guy friend.

It’s not like he hadn’t kissed a guy before. It had happened, once or twice, when there was a lot of substances flowing through his veins and he was a little too up for anything. It had happened before with Zayn, as much as Louis loathes to think about it now. But each time it had happened, they kept it under wraps. It was one of those things that was simply never discussed again, that was ignored in favor of keeping the status quo. Good friends kept their mouths shut.

Liam was better than just a good friend and wasn’t going to let this go.

Louis knows at some point, Liam is going to want to _talk_ about it.  He’s going to want to dissect it down to every little detail and talk about feelings and. And oh god. Liam was going to have that _talk_ with him. That one about how they were better off as friends. Where Liam would try to be supportive about Louis’s feelings, about Louis kissing boys. A conversation where everything got awkward and weird and Liam would get clingy for weeks after to overcompensate for being strange about it.

There’s a knock at his door and Louis realizes that conversation is happening _now_.  He wants to throw up.

Liam must have stolen a key card from security because Louis can hear him enter and shuffle around the room. The knock to the bathroom door comes next, quiet against the roaring in Louis’s mind. Then the door cracks up, shuts again once the smoke starts pouring out.

“Louis,” Liam says, sounding disappointed. “Come out here please? I don’t want to set off the smoke alarm.”

Louis could stay in the bathroom. It wouldn’t be hard to just freeze Liam out and wait for things to fall apart later. He imagines that’s what Liam’s expecting him to do. It’s what any other version of himself would do. So he stands up, wobbly on his feet and slips out into the bedroom.

Liam, to his credit, manages to only look surprised for a moment.  Then that sad, concerned look crosses his face and Louis has to steady himself for the start of it. This is the place where their friendship falls apart.

“Last night,” Liam begins, quiet and staring Louis down. “Some things happened. Things I don’t think either of us meant to happen.”

Louis sits heavy on the bed, rubbing at his temple. It’s humiliating. He can’t remember the last time he felt so small around Liam, so upset with himself. Deep down he knows he deserves it. The impulse he acted on had so much more to do with what he’d seen than felt and Liam didn’t deserve to get caught in the midst of Louis’s muddled feelings. He had to take this rejection with all the embarrassment it caused.

“What did you mean about me dying?” Liam asks quietly and things all go to hell again.

“What?” Louis parrots.

“Last night. You said something about me dying. That you couldn’t stop it.” Liam sits down next to Louis. “You were upset.”

“I-“ Louis stares at the carpet. What was there to say at this point? This isn’t the conversation he thought he’d be having. But it might be a better turn. A safer path. Something he could use to his advantage.  Maybe if Liam knew the truth, everything could be prevented.

“You died.” Louis says, feeling hollow. “You died. More than once and each time I’ve screwed up. I didn’t stop it. I tried to.”

He turns to Liam. It’s important that Liam knows he’s been trying. He’s a failure, in so many ways. But Liam has to know that Louis didn’t want things to go this way and that he’s trying to make it right. No matter how much it hurts. Louis puts his hand on Liam’s.

“I really tried. But that just got us both killed. And then you again and again.” He knocks his fist against his forehead, drags his hands across his eyes. “I don’t know how to fix it. Fix you. Fix everything that falls apart because we aren’t going to work with you gone. I’ve seen that.”

“I’ve watched them fall apart. Your family, the boys. No one can deal with it. Not with you gone.” His chest tightens, the tears start to burn at his eyes. “And it’s my fault. I should be able to fix it. Get out of this fucking loop and make it right.” He heaves. “I don’t know how.”

“Louis.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis apologizes. It’s such an empty thing to say. There’s no words that can fix it, no apology can ever be enough. “I’m so sorry.”

“Louis,” Liam says, removing Louis’s hand from his. “What have you taken?”

“What?” Louis scrubs at his eyes, confused.

“What did you take?” Liam asks, more firmly this time.

Louis looks up through his tears. Liam looks disappointed and uncomfortable.

“What drug was it?” Liam prods.

“Drug? Liam, what are you-“

“You’ve had a bad reaction to something. A, uh, hallucination.” Liam presses his lips together, frowns. “You need to tell me what it was.”

“Liam, I’m not on something. I’m trying to tell you the truth. The real truth.” Louis feels the desperation slipping into his tone. He sounds pathetic. “I’ve been hiding it. But maybe if you know that’ll fix it! Maybe you can be alright and this will stop!”

“Louis, calm down. Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m already alright.” Liam is starting to look annoyed. “You’re talking out of your head. Tell me what you took.”

“I didn’t-“

“Louis, we have a concert in a few hours!” Liam stands up, nostrils flared. “We have to leave soon. We’re going to be in front of so many people, kids! Kids, Louis! And you’re high! You’re talking nonsense!” Liam starts to pace, muscles tensed. “Everything’s already went so downhill. Harry and Niall are barely speaking! Everyone’s writing the nastiest things in the papers.”

Liam comes to a stop. “ _Zayn_.”

“Stop. Stop, it’s not what you think-“ Louis tries to speak over Liam but the other boy glares and gets louder.

“Now you’ve got off and tried to ruin it too. You’re making a mockery of everything we work for! Our fans! Our music! This!” His thrusts out his hand, gesturing between them. “Louis. I thought we were in this together.”

Louis’s heart drops to his feet. “We are.”

“No.” Liam shakes his head. He looks so sad and it makes Louis want to vomit. “You went and did this. You’ve stopped caring. I never thought you’d stop caring.”

“I care!” Louis tries to rise and can’t. The weed and alcohol take their toll, making him stumble back into his seat.

Liam shakes his head again, starts for the door.

“I care, Liam. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have told you,” Louis shouts, watching Liam walk away. “I wouldn’t have kissed you!”

Liam stops, facing the door. Louis holds his breath, waiting for Liam to fire back. They have to keep talking. They have to fix this.

“Try to sober up before the concert. Car’s coming in twenty.” Liam speaks stiffly. A second later and he’s out the door. He doesn’t even slam it.

Louis sits still in the empty room. He waits for Liam to come back, and when he doesn’t, starts to cry again. It’s all just another failure.

-

The concert is terrible. The tension between Niall and Harry is nothing new, not to Louis, but the tension between him and Liam is nigh unprecedented. The crowd can sense the disjointedness of all them. There’s a lot of awkward murmuring between songs, a lot of odd looks from those in front. Even the backing band are shooting them all raised brows at how none of the boys will come close to each other.

The worst of it is when Louis accidently stumbles into Liam on the catwalk, slipping on a shirt someone had thrown on stage. The look Liam gives him, a heavy glare followed by an uncivil shrug off actually makes a few of the girls in the front-right gasp. It makes Louis feel small and terrible. He keeps close to the back after that.

Liam takes the first car back with Niall, not even bothering to clean up. Louis had been caught up talking to Lottie and had to wait for the other driver with a moody Harry. By the time they get back to the hotel, Liam and Niall have already left for the club. Harry takes off for his room.

Louis tries texting Liam, even calling a few times, but Liam is currently ignoring him. Niall says as much when Louis texts him, then refuses to answer anything else no matter how important Louis tries to stress it is.

Louis ends up in his sister’s room, one that has a window facing out into the front of the building. He sits by that window all night, hoping that one of them will actually listen to his warning and come back early. That they will come back before it’s too late. They don’t want to. So he makes them.

He puts in a call to security, lies about a threat and forces them to call the boys back early. He gets extra security down at the front, telling them he sees a crowd forming. The boys are back hours before he knows they need to be. A few more guards are out there, helping to keep the girls aside while Niall and Liam stumble back towards the building.  He feels sickly elated, watching their progress across the parking lot. He presses his forehead to the cold glass, closes his eyes.

The gunshot is a whisper from so high up, muffled by the brick and glass. He opens his eyes and sees Liam fall, an ant in the crowd below. Niall falls beside him a second later. Lottie starts screaming behind him. Louis joins her.

-

He awakens again and dives out of bed. Louis can’t handle it. Not now. Not today. Not _again_.

He’s screaming before he realizes his done it, up out of bed and half way across the room. Everything in him hurts, his chest, his throat, his mind. He’s failed again. He made another mess of things, let Liam die again. And not just Liam this time. He stumbles back to the bed when his phone chimes, reads that ugly text again.

He throws his phone, doesn’t feel any better when it crashes into the wall. His stomach bubbles with fury and he suddenly has to get it out, make it stop. He tears the sheets from his bed, throws the pillows. Punches the headboard.

His hand connects with a crunch, pain of a more physical nature shooting up his arm. It hurts and for a moment it’s the best kind of feeling, taking him out of his head and making him focus. He does it again, screaming at the white hot shooting through his bones. Again and it hurts so bad his knees buckle. Louis flops back into the bed, sobbing and curling around the painful throbbing.

-

Eventually he has to get up and tell their handlers about it. The trip to the hospital isn’t so bad, it’s a little nice to have everyone fussing over him for a while. He misses the interview, of course, and it’s not until after that he sees any of the boys. It’s decided Harry will keep him company until the concert, not to overwhelm him while he’s hopped up on drugs. Besides, Niall and Liam are straightening out how to disperse the parts so that Louis can take it easy that night.

Harry tries to be a comfort, blessedly leaving behind whatever issues he’s having with Niall in favor of fussing. “You can’t take anything else for a few hours, so maybe you should just sleep until then.” He says as he arranges and re-arranges Louis’s pill bottles on the bedside table.

“Yeah,” Louis sighs, already comfortable on the bed.  “Liam’s gone already?”

“Yes,” Harry says, amused. “You’ve asked that twice already.”

“Mmm. Gotta keep an eye on him.”

“Yeah?” Harry asks, laughing. “Worried about Payno?”

“Yes,” Louis tries for serious, annoyed that his words are slurring. “I have to be. I have to look out for him.”

Harry mutters under his breath, joining Louis on the bed.

“He’s going to die. In this timeline. I gotta change it,” Louis says after a moment, petting absently at the comforter. “I’ve tried before and failed. Gotta do it this time. Stop all this time traveling nonsense.”

Harry snorts. “So you’re a time traveler? Been watching a little too much Doctor Who, huh?”

“No. I am. Not a Doctor, but yeah.” Louis is having a little trouble concentrating. “Keep going back to save him.”

“What a hero.” Harry teases, tucking the comforter up closer to Louis’s chin.

“No.” Louis goes hoarse. “I’m not. Not yet.”

“Mate, these pills are doing a real number on you. Crazy stories and all.” Harry pets his hair and it feels so nice that Louis doesn’t try to protest that Harry’s wrong. “Not even going to remember any of this when you wake up, I bet.”

Louis tries to answer, but it just comes out as a mumble.

“You won’t remember a thing,” Harry says slowly, quieting.

Louis isn’t sure how much time passes, but he’s fell into a light doze when Harry starts to talk again.

“I think things are wrecked with Niall.” Harry starts, voice a bare whisper. “I don’t think he plans on talking to me ever again.” He shifts above Louis, but Louis can’t force his eyes open to check.

“I went back, met up with some of the girls back in LA. He acts like he can’t forgive that. Like that changes everything.” Harry’s voice takes a harder edge. “Like I did something _wrong_.”

“We’re not nothing, we’re not anything either. It was just fun. I don’t get how he doesn’t understand that.” He sighs. “Things don’t always have to have a name. Do they?”

Louis doesn’t answer.

Harry chuckles, no humor in his tone. “He wanted there to be. Says he’s done now. Don’t think you can come be a hero on this, can you?”

Harry lays down along with Louis, rolls away.

“We can get through the tour though. That’s got to be enough. Some things have to be enough.”

-

The concert is a mess. Liam is constantly having to cover for Louis, who can’t stop swaying and forgets most of his lyrics. He wishes he’d stayed at the hotel, slept more instead of coming out. But it looks bad to let one of them stay behind with all the drama of the last year, so he tries to power through. He can’t hold it though and sits out the last two songs, the painkillers fading out and leaving him gritting through the urge to cry.

After, at the hotel, Liam pushes his way into Louis’s room. He forces more pills down Louis throat, has him wrapped up and in bed before Louis can tell up from down. Louis can’t find the energy to argue, just lets Liam lead him around until he’s allowed to sleep again.

When he wakes it’s late into the next day, but his head feels clearer even if his hand is throbbing. Liam’s still in the room, sitting in the chair near the window and scrolling through his phone.

“Li?” Louis’s voice is shredding and he clears his throat a few times.

“Hi.” Liam smiles brightly, gets up and offers Louis a water bottle. He holds it for Louis, making sure enough is taken. He gives Louis over another pill silently, makes Louis finish off the water. “Good morning. Are you feeling better?”

“Hand hurts.” Louis says, laying back against the pillows.

“Yeah. Been there.” Liam lifts his arm, wiggles his fingers. “Thought I could help out. I know how much it sucks.

“Mmm.” Louis confirms, watching Liam straighten out the things on the bedside table.

“They said you hit the head board when you woke up? The text’s startled you?” Liam’s voice is trying for light and overshooting to guilty. “I’m sorry. I told Niall to text you. He feels bad too, of course! But.  You know. Sorry.”

Louis laughs a little. “This isn’t your fault. I was…it’s not your fault.”

Liam smiles wryly at Louis, sits at the edge of the bed. “I can leave if you want. Or I thought I could keep you company? Either way, are you hungry? I can get you room service first.”

“No,” Louis says, reaching for him. Liam obliges enough to scoot closer, lets Louis put a hand on him. “Stay. And get me some bacon. Keep me from being bored.”

Liam grins, goes for the hotel phone. Louis watches him with a smile, soaking in the painkiller haze and the presence of a dead man walking.

-

He doesn’t mention anything more to Liam, not about the truth. Not about the timelines or the loop or what’s coming next. He can’t deal with Liam freaking out again, not with the painkillers messing with his head. It’s easier to just sit and let Liam coddle him. It’s easier to stay quiet and pretend this is how things were meant to be.

The concert comes and goes, and its actually better this time around. The other boys still take over most of Louis’s parts, but Louis feels less shaky and more like a functional being. He’s not half bad as the night drags on, actually remembering cues and managing a decent harmony despite the pain in his hand.

He gets a pleasant surprise when Liam says he isn’t going out, that he’d like to stay with Louis that evening.

“You’re still poorly. I’d feel like a right ass going out and having fun without you. Besides, you’ve got to go back to see a doctor again tomorrow, right? See if the swelling is down enough for the cast. I’ll come with.” Liam laughs. “Got to be the first one to sign.”

Louis doesn’t last long that night, but it’s okay. Liam goes back to his own room, own bed. He promises to stay there until morning.

And Louis wakes up with is phone telling him he’s not went back in time again.

He could, and does if he’s being honest, cry with the relief. Liam even comes to collect him for the doctor’s visit and he’s fine. Alive and well and standing. Liam doesn’t so much as blink when Louis pulls him in for a hug before they leave, muttering about how funny Louis is around the painkillers.

They head outside, the morning sun beating down on them brightly. Louis turns to ask Liam what color he thinks he should get for the cast, watching Liam start to grin in that scrunched up way that says he’s though of something funny. It’s wonderful, it’s fixed.

And then he hears _that_ noise again. Liam’s chest blooms red.

It starts over.

-

Louis is floating.  The days come and go. He doesn’t do anything to stop Liam this time, he barely comes out of his room.

Another reset. He can’t breathe, steals an inhaler from Harry’s bag. He doesn’t talk to Liam at all.

Another reset. He spends his free time watching horror movies. The screaming is kind of soothing.

Another reset. Then another. He stops crying long enough to try to have the girl banned from hotel grounds. It’s too difficult without a name. Restraining orders need an identity, he learns.

It resets again. He tries to find ways to keep Liam from leaving. One timeline he starts a fight with Liam, intent on it keeping Liam in and yelling the night long. It doesn’t work. Another timeline and he starts the fight with Harry, then another one with Niall. Neither ends well, Harry just storms off and leaves the building. Liam follows. Both die.  Fighting with Niall just earns him a broken nose and a bloody mouth. Liam is shot escorting Louis to the hospital.

He tries setting Liam’s bathroom on fire, which only makes them have to evacuate to the parking lot. Another reset and he tries prank calls. Another and Louis sets up a skype call with Liam’s sister. Another and he calls in Sophia. The reset again, and he tries locking Liam into a bathroom.  He tries telling the truth again. He tries lies.

He tries, over and over and over. Nothing saves Liam.  If he doesn’t die on the appointed night, he dies the morning after. Nothing Louis does makes a real difference.

In some timelines, he ignores Liam and lets his grief drive him into isolation. In others, Louis stays on Liam like they’re attached. He savors those rare moments they have together before he has to watch Liam die again. In a few timelines, he gets drunk again and kisses Liam, commits it all to memory. He never lets it go further. It’s hard enough just to kiss him. These uncertain first kisses is all he’s ever going to get.

In one timeline it all hurts so much that he can’t bother to leave his room at all and just smokes his way through everything. He goes until it’s not enough and calls up his connections in the crew. It’s not hard to find someone who knows a dealer out in this city. Louis has made a lot of connections since the first time he lit up, finding a crew members hiding out back of the venue with a joint and an offer to try it. Years later he’s not nervous about it anymore, stopped acting green every time he wanted to ask about getting something and stopped looking over his shoulder after every toke like his mother would show up to yell at him. Even after the video leak he doesn’t really worry about anything getting out, hasn’t had a real reason to as he and Zayn had mostly stuck to weed and weed alone.

There had been times, however, when they felt like dipping into something harder. Those things weren’t difficult to come by either; in the industry they were in, nearly all celeb parties came with lines in the bathroom or pills handed out like candy. Mostly they all just stayed away from it as there simply wasn’t room in the boy band machine for rehab. Still, Louis knew where he could score when he wanted to, if he wanted to. And right now, he wanted to.

The last time he’d taken a hit like this, Louis had been curled up in Zayn’s hotel room. They’d had a rare stretch of days off ahead of them before jetting to the next city and a shitty week behind them. Everything had been shiny and loose and colorful, Zayn tucked tight into his side and laughing quietly into Louis’s neck. It had been a great night, all things considered, and one they hadn’t spoken about after. Partially because neither had much memory of it after, partially because what Louis could recall involved a very wet slip of tongue and Zayn giggling into his mouth. After, they’d always skirted around the idea of it again.

Now, Louis isn’t considering the embarrassing, intimate parts of it. He wants that floaty feeling back, wants all the colors and distortion and lack of memory. He just wants to feel good for a while. Weed just isn’t cutting it anymore, too good at calming him down and keeping him tied to the funk hanging over him. He needs a bright spot.

He gets too bright.

“What’s this about?” Zayn asks over the phone, sounding sleepy and annoyed and resigned.

Louis isn’t even sure when he thought it would be a good idea to call Zayn, but now he’s here and Zayn’s voice is filling up the hotel bathroom. “I’m about to lose Liam. Worse than I lost you.”

“What?” Zayn’s pitch rises, crackling over the speaker system.

“I’m tired of losing.” Louis says, closing his eyes. “I’m so tired Zayn.”

The line goes quiet.

“Zayn?”

“Don’t call again.” Zayn says curtly. The call ends.

Louis takes another hit.

-

Timelines come and go like a blur. Louis tries to find a different way out. Killing himself doesn’t do anything but make the reset come faster. It’s like some terrible cosmic joke.

He stills tries it a few times. Just to be sure.

-

Another reset and Louis finds himself out on the balcony on the big night. He’s got a joint and a beer and time to kill before it comes killing time. He leans over the balcony edge, idly flicking ashes down into the hotel courtyard when Niall finds him.

“You’re looking terrible,” Niall says, easy as anything. He takes a seat on one of the ugly metal chairs out there, pulling it up close to Louis. He drags the other over too, jabs his thumb at it a few times.

“That’s a way to talk to a man,” Louis snorts, falling heavy into the seat.

“It’s a way to ask you to talk about it.” Niall steals Louis’s beer, tips it his direction.

“You wouldn’t want to know. You wouldn’t believe me.” Louis feels like he’s drowning in his own self-pity. He thinks the him of a month ago would be disgusted.

“Okay. Maybe I won’t.” Niall shrugs. “But I’m here to listen anyway.”

“It’s crazy.”

“So?” Niall stares Louis down until Louis feels his resolve crumbling. “Just start. Promise not to get on your case about the crazy until the sun comes up.”

And Louis tells him. About the timelines. About Liam. About his own failures.

And Niall listens. Face impassive. Quiet and rock steady.

“It’s all just been shit. A nightmare. Nothing I do fixes anything. Nothing I do can save him or anyone else.” He breathes heavy, scrubbing at the shadow of hair on his chin. Louis can’t keep the world from falling apart, even after he’d begged for the chance. He’d spent a lifetime obsessed with comics and superheroes. And now he has his power, jumped at the call. But he can’t do it. He’s not a hero, not where it counts. He’s just scared and hurt. Tired. A dreamer instead of a doer, just like he’d never wanted to be.

“I just want it to be a perfect ending.” Louis says, choking on the words. He stares down at the city before them, the light blurring together with the wetness gathering in the corners of his eyes. He takes a long last drag of his joint and snubs it out against the railing.

“Mate, there’s no such thing as a perfect ending,” Niall says, tone all finality and wisdom. “You can only do what you can do. Sometimes that has to be enough.” He clucks his tongue at Louis, shuffling forward to stand. He puts a hand on Louis’s shoulder, mostly out of a need to comfort but Louis knows how heavily the other is leaning on him to compensate for his stiff knee.

Strangely, all Louis feels in that moment is weightless.

-

The timeline resets, but Louis is ready.

He doesn’t stop the fight, doesn’t listen in while Niall and Harry break each other. He stays away from Liam’s concern, ignores everyone in favor of keeping to himself. And the night after the concert, he goes down by himself.

He waits until late, leaving not to club but to see the gaggle of girls that have such a place in his nightmares. He looks them all in the eye, asks their names and jokes around for a few minutes with each one. He takes pictures, signs scraps of paper and films a few videos. _That_ girl isn’t here, but he sees the ones she’s always standing by.

Louis asks what her name is, lies and says he’s seen them all together before. The girls are all appropriately flattered, they giggle and flush under the attention. He gets the name.

He goes back inside, waits for Liam to get back from his outing with Niall. He goes to sleep and wakes again in another timeline.

-

The next timeline he starts by getting breakfast with the boys. He tries his best to be cordial through the interview, doesn’t follow to watch Niall and Harry’s fight. Louis waits until that night, makes Niall come over for a few rounds of FIFA instead. He keeps it simple, he keeps it light.

“You don’t have to forgive him yet. But think about it.” He says, watching Niall tense up. “Talk about it before you can’t anymore.”

The next day Louis corners Harry early in the morning down in the gym, gives him much of the same.

“An apology and listening can’t hurt. Even you have to admit keeping him as friend means more than all the girls in California.” He says, walking away before Harry can climb off the machine to argue.

-

Louis goes back to his room, finds everything he needs. He opens his computer and looks up everything he can on the girl. He checks her Facebook, her twitter and even her Linkin but doesn’t find much more than the usual rambling someone would expect from professionally linked social media. There’s more hiding in there, he just knows it. So he checks a few more sites and breaks down to call home, for his sisters.

“Fiz,” he starts, sighing on the vowel, “How would I find someone’s social accounts? You know, the _real_ ones. “

“Stalking some poor girl, big brother?” She teases. There’s laughter in the background and the looping music of some program on TV. Maybe she’s having friends over tonight, he thinks, and tamps down the homesickness.

“Yes,” Louis replies, keeping his voice carefully neutral so she thinks it’s a joke.

She falls for it and cackles, sounding like Lottie after she sees Harry trip. Like their mother when watching old comedies. Like Louis before the world flipped and he started living the same life a dozen times over.

“Here’s what you need to do.” She finally tells him, mirth in her voice and the sounds of home behind her.

-

He finds the girl’s tumblr and twitter and blog, reads through each with religious precision. Louis makes coffee in the hotel provided maker, grimacing at the taste and downing cups like water for a dying man. It’s light out by the time he’s finished, a separate window open to a word document where he types up all his findings.

Becky, or whatmakesyoubelong94, isn’t well. Louis already knew that, really, because he wouldn’t expect a stable someone to go around shooting popstars, but it’s more than obvious from the intensifying posts all over the girl’s fandom accounts. She loves Harry, hates Liam and makes violent posts about wishing the other boys would just die and let Harry make it big on his own. Possibly at modeling.

It’s not the first time Louis has heard that a fan hates him or one of the other boys or all of the boys in favor of a single performer. He thinks it happens with any group that gets a certain recognition and probably even to those who don’t. He even knows this isn’t the first time someone has fixated on hurting a celebrity. He has a tab opened to Wikipedia to prove it.  It still makes Louis sick to his stomach to read the ill wishes against his friends.

He can’t really call the police, not with this much. And he has no reason to have anything brought up against her without sounding like a lunatic raving about time travel. So he calls a friend instead. It’s easy to make contact with the girl, to promise tickets to the show and a meet up with Harry.  It’s easy to convince her to agree, the watch the screenshots his buddy sends him of her overuse of emojis and exclamation points. Louis is still sick to his stomach, but it’s from cold satisfaction now.

Niall comes by that morning, picking him up before the call to get to sound check. Louis is already dressed, forgoing sleep for plotting and instead downing more coffee in preparation for the day. Niall raises his brows at the smell of roast beans and littering of plastic cups.

“Alright?” He asks, fiddling just a little with his phone as he does. It’s a low key way of expression concern, worry without appearing worried. Louis would be grateful, if he wasn’t already for the day before.

“Fine,” Louis says, and means it for the first time in ages. He shrugs on a jacket and pushes Niall out to the hallway.

“Did you sleep?” Niall asks more with his tone than the words allow, eyes calculated and searching.

Louis smiles grimly, wishing he had more caffeine. “I can sleep when I’m dead.”

-

Becky comes in that evening with the other M&G guests. She hugs Harry for ages, she ignores everyone else. Harry talks to her, polite as ever and she walks away with tears in her eyes. She glares at Liam as she passes.

Louis spots her that night from the stage, screaming from the front and center tickets he’d provided. She’s mouthing along to all the songs, acting like she’s having the time of her life. He sees her touch at her side pocket over and over, mostly when Liam’s doing a run or making a joke at Harry’s expense. Louis doesn’t think she could have gotten a gun in past security, but he keeps an eye on her all night. If he misses his cue in Kiss You for it, so be it.

He doesn’t see her again until they’re leaving, all cleaned up and packing in for the hotel. Liam’s trying to convince Louis to go out to a club that Louis will be glad to never hear of again. Niall’s already went on ahead in a separate car. Harry’s only a few paces behind Louis, busily facetiming his sister. Security is pressed around them, crew and friends milling about the parking lot while everyone clears out.

It’s as safe as it was going to get.

Becky’s standing off to the side, just outside the door. She watches them walk for a moment, not going into with the sudden clamor of the other fans congregated there. She looks once at Harry, setting her face in a determined frown. She tenses and darts under the arms of a guard, hopping onto Liam in record time.

Louis just watches.

She doesn’t have a gun, as he suspected, but she does have her keys and she brings them down on Liam’s shoulder with vengeance. There’s screams from the crowd, a shout from Liam and then she’s being drug off him by a crew member before security pounces on her. Liam stumbles away from the mess, neck and shoulder blooming red.

Louis breathes.

Liam looks startled and in pain, but he’s still standing. Keys weren’t enough to kill, not at that angle and not in that place. It is enough to cause him significant pain and to frighten the hell out of him, so Louis doesn’t say anything about it when Harry more or less trips into giving Liam a concerned hug. The other boys’ face is white with shock and he touches around the hand Liam has clamped to the meat of his shoulder, making shrieking noises when he pulls away with red on his fingertips.

The security team has Becky in a wrestling hold, one pinning her down and the rest on their phones.  She’s pat down while they talk, the men holding onto her keys and a nail file like she’ll escape to use them again. Louis is sure the police will be there shortly. An ambulance will likely follow. As it is, Lou’s trying to pry Harry away from Liam, scarf bunched up in her hand to use as a makeshift bandage.

Louis lets out a choked, relieved sob and walks over to help. He holds Harry off, watching Liam grimace when Lou presses the cloth wad in too hard and listening to the crew try to calm down the confused girls still standing by the door. A faint siren calls in the background. Louis buries his face into Harry’s hair to hide a smile, knowing no one would understand it. Not in this time line.

Because, finally, everything is going to be fine.

-

Later that night, while sitting in a hospital waiting room while Liam gets stiches, he opens up the same message thread he’d never been able to delete. For a moment he stares at the last message Zayn sent, and he lets himself be angry. It bubbles hot in his stomach, makes his eyes threaten tears. And then he lets it go in one big gusty breath.

He types out a single message, a single ‘I’m sorry’ and lets the pieces fall. By the time a nurse is gathering him to see Liam, the check is there and he knows he’s been heard. Zayn doesn’t text back and Louis doesn’t expect him too. For the moment, it’s enough.  Liam’s smiling at him, showing off the stiches and asking if he’ll have a cool scar. Liam blushes, just a bit, and laughs when Louis puts a hand on top of his. Again, for now, it’s enough.

He has all the time in the world to make it more.


End file.
